


Exclusive

by rotasha



Category: DCU, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Bisexual Bruce Wayne, Bisexual Clark Kent, Friends to Lovers, Identity Porn, Journalism, M/M, Secret Identity, Single Parent Bruce Wayne, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-06
Updated: 2019-12-14
Packaged: 2021-01-24 11:24:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 29,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21337456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rotasha/pseuds/rotasha
Summary: When something about Clark Kent convinces Bruce Wayne to open up in a way he usually doesn’t, Clark plans to use this to his advantage, writing a feature article on Bruce's charity work. He doesn’t intend to strike up a friendship with Bruce. He certainly doesn’t intend to develop feelings for him. Unfortunately, these things don’t always go according to plan...
Relationships: Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne
Comments: 255
Kudos: 1333





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello and welcome to my first ever slow burn. This started with an idea I’ve had for literal years and it was going to be a quick two- or three-chapter affair but that’s not the way it's turning out so I’m leaning into it. Hope you all enjoy yourselves! Comments are appreciated. I try to stick to comic canon as much as possible but as we all know, comic canon is a confusing mess, so you’ll have to cut me some slack.

It was a chilly evening in early October, the last remnants of summer finally drifting away on a crisp autumn breeze. It was exactly the type of evening Clark would have preferred to spend in his cozy Metropolis apartment putting the finishing touches on an article due for publication the next morning, or perhaps out at a bar getting drinks with his coworkers to celebrate a birthday or anniversary or some other flimsy excuse for alcohol consumption.

Unfortunately, Clark was doing neither of those things. Instead, he was in a mansion in Gotham covering the launch of yet another billionaire’s pet project. It wasn’t the sort of story Clark usually covered, but Cat Grant had practically begged him to take over for her when she came down with the flu at the last minute. Given that Cat Grant never begged for anything, Clark knew it was important, and he’d reluctantly agreed.

The billionaire of the hour was Bruce Wayne, notorious playboy and society darling who, Clark’s last-minute research had revealed, had recently and completely unexpectedly adopted a twelve-year-old orphan. Rumor had it this had been the inspiration for Wayne to start his own charitable foundation dedicated to providing aid to orphans and foster children and, somewhat incongruously, the victims of crime.

The event ran as expected: Bruce Wayne gave an impassioned speech to a crowd full of pampered elites on the sad state of social services in Gotham and the importance of helping the less fortunate that sounded so sincere Clark had to applaud the talented speechwriter who was no doubt behind it, and then the aforementioned crowd was turned loose to drink and mingle until the sun came up. Clark, a virtual nobody, was studiously ignored by the throngs of executives, politicians, and socialites, which was perfectly alright with him. He made his bumpy way through tight clusters of people holding delicate champagne flutes, seeking fresh air and finally locating a door that led out onto a peaceful, solitary balcony.

He took a deep breath of the cool night air and sighed. After taking a moment to compose himself, he whipped his cell phone out of his pocket and checked his messages; Cat, who was supposed to be resting but could never resist the temptation to micromanage, had sent him four texts and an email instructing him on  _ exactly _ what she wanted him to write about the event and making sure he’d gotten there on time. Clark sent a quick, reassuring reply and turned his attention to a much more pleasant text from Lois:  _ How’s the event? _

He was in the middle of typing up his response when he was distracted by the sound of the door into the ballroom opening and closing behind him, followed by footsteps heading in his general direction. Clark turned, surprised to find the host of the event, none other than Bruce Wayne himself, standing a respectable distance away from him and leaning over the stone railing to look out onto the vast, manicured grounds surrounding his estate.

Clark was even more surprised when Bruce actually spoke to him. “Nights like these make me wish I’d never quit smoking,” he said gruffly, sounding like a completely different man from the one who’d just pleasantly greeted a room full of his supposed peers. “Anything for an excuse to escape that crowd.” With that, Bruce turned, holding out a hand to Clark in greeting. Clark shook it. “Bruce Wayne,” Bruce said, as if an introduction was in any way necessary.

“Clark Kent,” Clark said, mildly amused by the unexpected turn of events. Maybe he’d get some entertainment value out of this evening after all. He jerked his chin toward the door. “Isn’t this your party?”

Bruce rolled his eyes. “Yes. Unfortunately. If it wasn’t, I’d have been out of here an hour ago.” Up close, Clark got a much better look at the man he’d previously only seen from a distance, and it was true: He didn’t look the least bit happy to be there. His eyes were rimmed with dark circles, his skin was deathly pale, and there was a hollowness to his perfectly chiseled cheekbones. He was handsome, sure, but he was also exhausted.

“I used to be able to do shit like this all night,” Bruce continued, unprompted, when Clark didn’t speak. “I always figured new parents were being dramatic when they tell you how much harder life is with a kid. If anything, they weren’t being dramatic enough.”

_ Ah _ , thought Clark.  _ That explains it. _ Clark had also interacted with his fair share of new parents, and they all displayed the same hallmarks of sleepless nights and stressful days, although that was usually because they’d just brought home a newborn that spent twenty-four hours a day screaming, eating, and needing constant supervision and care. He would have imagined a twelve-year-old would be easier to manage.

As if he’d read Clark’s mind, Bruce continued: “I realize I don’t have it nearly as bad as most. I got to skip the stage where all the kid does is scream all night. I don’t think I could have survived that.” Bruce turned his gaze back to Clark and, for the first time in their interaction, seemed to look Clark up and down, taking in the man he’d been engaged in conversation with for at least a few minutes now. “Do you have kids?” he asked, after he’d apparently judged Clark around the right age to be a parent, something Clark was already painfully aware of given how often his parents not-so-subtly complained about their lack of grandchildren.

“Not yet,” Clark admitted. “I might want to someday. Although you aren’t exactly selling me on it.” He figured, based on what the man had said so far, Bruce had a decent sense of humor, so he tried for a bit of levity. He succeeded, judging by the way Bruce let out a sharp bark of laughter.

“It’s great,” he insisted, some of the bitterness gone from his voice. “Really. Best decision I ever made.” He paused, and the bitterness returned. “But the stress…” He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I’m unloading on you. But you looked like you might actually be decent company, which is uncommon around here. I could tell just from looking at you that you’re not one of the rich fucks who’s been to a million of these.”

Clark raised his eyebrows. He certainly hadn’t been expecting that. “Rich fucks like you?” he asked, knowing he was really trying his luck here but not particularly caring. It didn’t matter to him all that much if he offended the famous Bruce Wayne. It’s not as though he was likely to ever see him again.

Bruce gave him an inscrutable look, but otherwise appeared unfazed. “Rich fucks like me,” he repeated, seeming to accept this judgment. He looked back out, beyond the grounds this time, tracing the starlit Gotham skyline with his eyes. “I needed to talk to someone sane for sixty seconds before going back in there.”

“How could you tell I’m not one of your billionaire besties?” Clark thought he’d ask, even though he could guess the answer. Nothing about Clark fit in with the rest of the crowd inside the ballroom: not his clothes, not his demeanor, not the faint trace of a Midwestern accent that lingered in his voice no matter how long he lived in Metropolis.

“You look like you have some humanity left in you,” Bruce said, diplomatically sidestepping all the other glaring clues: Clark’s cheap glasses, a watch that barely cost more than a hundred dollars and that was the most expensive accessory Clark owned, and the same shoes he wore to every wedding he’d ever attended because he couldn’t be bothered to own more than one nice pair. “I couldn’t help but wonder how a nice guy like you would end up at a place like this.”

Clark laughed at the tired line. “I’m a reporter.”

Bruce frowned, a reaction Clark was more than used to. “Shit.” He leaned closer to Clark, as if he was suddenly concerned someone might overhear them. Clark cast a quick glance around, confirming the were still alone on the balcony. “Please don’t print that stuff I said about being a parent,” Bruce added, sounding more sincere than he had all night. And then he muttered, more to himself than to Clark, “Alfred would kill me.”

Clark, ever the journalist, made a mental note to find out who this “Alfred” was. In the meantime: “I won’t, I promise,” he said, and he meant it, even though he knew Cat Grant would eviscerate him if she learned he’d picked up a juicy piece of gossip and hadn’t told her. “I’m not here to write about your parenting philosophy. I’m here to write about your charity work.” Seeing an opportunity, Clark took his phone back out, preparing to start a voice recording. He shifted effortlessly into reporter mode. “Speaking of which, while I have you, is there any chance I could get a quote?”

“About the charity?” Clark nodded. “Of course. What do you want to know?”

They ended up talking — on record, Clark thought gleefully, eager to break the good news to Cat — for several minutes about the new Wayne Foundation and Bruce’s plans for it. What Clark had initially assumed to be little more than another shallow vanity project actually sounded remarkably well thought out. Bruce’s plans were extensive, and Clark almost wished he could have stayed longer to get all the gritty details, but as he watched the minutes tick away, he knew he needed to leave soon if he hoped to get started on the article before he went to bed.

“Anything else?” Bruce asked when they reached a lull in the conversation.

“I think that’s plenty,” Clark said with a genuine smile. “Thank you.”

Bruce smiled back, an edge of mischief in his eyes. He somehow looked less tired than he had just moments ago. “No, thank  _ you _ . It’s not often I get a convenient excuse to stay out here while everyone in there talks about their private jets and yachts and resort vacations. Half of them don’t have an altruistic bone in their body. It’s all about appearances.”

“I would have assumed you were exactly the same as the rest of them,” Clark said, although he still wasn’t fully convinced Bruce wasn’t. Experience had taught him that a healthy dose of cynicism was never a bad thing, even if he remained, at heart, an optimist. “I had no idea the famous Bruce Wayne thought the rest of highbrow society was made up of a bunch of spoiled sycophants.”

Bruce gave a glittering yet painfully fake grin. “I’m an incredibly gifted liar.”

“Is there any particular reason you decided to give me a glimpse of the truth?” This was, once again, the reporter in Clark speaking; it was his job to ask the hard questions.

Bruce looked him up and down once again, eyes lingering on his face with that same inscrutable look from before. Finally, he spoke, and he yet again sounded completely sincere (although, coming from a man who’d just proclaimed himself a liar, that didn’t mean much). “You remind me of someone I know. I guess you have a trustworthy face.” Bruce paused, shrugged. “And I think my butler’s sick of hearing about it, which leaves me with no one else to talk to.”

“Well, if I’m ever at another one of these and I see you making your miserable way through the crowd, I’ll be sure to corner you for an impromptu interview, give you a chance to escape the monotony.” It was something of an empty promise; Clark didn’t see himself covering for Cat again anytime in the near future, and it was unlikely Bruce would remember him much longer than that.

“I’d appreciate that,” Bruce said, but he was already leaving. He disappeared through the door and into the ballroom.


	2. Chapter 2

October turned to November turned to December, pleasant autumn nights turned to freezing winter ones. Truth be told, Clark didn’t mind the cold, and he always looked forward to the holiday season December brought with it; it meant celebrations with his coworkers, exchanges of gifts, and a visit to his parents’ farm in Kansas. By the time Thanksgiving had come and gone and all the stores were decked in lights and playing carols, Clark had completely forgotten about his interaction with Bruce Wayne.

That is, until Cat Grant cornered him by the coffee machine at work. He lifted an eyebrow at her over his blue mug emblazoned with the Superman insignia, a cheeky birthday gift from Lois.

“I need another favor,” Cat confessed, skipping straight to the point as she always did.

“Planning on getting the flu again?” Clark teased.

“Ugh, not if I can help it.” She shouldered him out of the way to commandeer the coffee machine; it was early in the day and the device was in high demand. “No, there are two events this Friday that I was hoping to cover, but they’re back to back and on opposite ends of the city so I won’t be able to make it to both of them. You did so well getting those quotes out of Bruce Wayne at his foundation launch that I figured I’d ask you to cover the one I can’t make it to. There’s a special exhibit at the Metropolis Museum of Art and a charity gala raising money for the homeless. Got a preference?”

“I’ll take the charity gala,” Clark said, figuring it was similar enough to the Wayne Foundation launch that he’d be in familiar territory. Besides, it sounded like it was for a good cause.

“Great. I’ll email you the details.” With a now-full cup of coffee in one hand and the other resting appreciatively on Clark’s shoulder, Cat heaved a melodramatic sigh of relief. “You’re a lifesaver, Smallville.”

And that was how Clark Kent found himself once again surrounded by rich people, listening to another billionaire give a speech about helping the poor. He took notes and cornered a few key figures involved in the charity that was hosting the gala to get quotes for his article. He was just checking his watch and wondering if it would be worthwhile to stay until the event’s conclusion or if he could duck out early when a familiar face caught his attention out of the corner of his eye.

Bruce Wayne looked much the same as the last time Clark had seen him, although Clark noted the dark circles around his eyes were less pronounced; whether that meant he was finally getting a semi-reasonable amount of sleep or that he had finally discovered the magic of concealer remained to be seen. Bruce was deep in conversation with an older, balding man… or, to put it more accurately, the older man was deep in conversation with him, droning on and on while Bruce did little more than give the occasional nod and sweep his gaze around the room in a desperate search for someone more entertaining to occupy his time.

Figuring he owed Bruce for all the material he’d given him for his article on the Wayne Foundation launch, Clark was only too happy to be that someone. He made a beeline for the billionaire, ducking in between him and the older gentleman when the latter finally paused to take a breath.

“Excuse me,” he said, and Bruce turned to lock eyes with him. Recognition flooded his features in an instant, which admittedly took Clark by surprise. He hadn’t expected Bruce to actually remember him. “Mr. Wayne. Clark Kent,  _ Daily Planet _ . I’d love to speak with you for a moment about your plans for the Wayne Foundation this holiday season.”

“Of course. If you’ll excuse me…” Bruce gave a polite nod to his verbose companion, and the older man finally took the hint and wandered off to find someone else to annoy. Bruce gestured to a space where the crowded ballroom broke off into a series of corridors that led, as a conveniently located sign indicated, to the bathrooms. “Why don’t we step into the hall for a moment? I can hardly hear myself think.”

Once they’d reached the relative privacy of the hall — Bruce led him in the opposite direction of the bathrooms so they wouldn’t be interrupted by drunken attendees looking for a place to pee — Bruce switched off his public persona like a lightswitch, breaking into a smirk. “You’re a man who keeps his promises, aren’t you, Mr. Kent?”

“Clark, please,” Clark corrected. “I’ve never been ‘Mr. Kent.’ It’s too formal.” Clark had a lot of names — Clark Kent, Kal-El, Superman, to name a few — but “Mr. Kent” had never felt right to him. “And you’re right. I do keep my promises. Especially when they conveniently guarantee me one-on-one access to a coveted source.”

Bruce raised an eyebrow. “You’d know all about coveted sources. I looked you up after we last ran into each other.” Now  _ that _ surprised Clark. Not only had Bruce Wayne remembered him, he’d actually gone out of his way to learn about him. Maybe there was more to this billionaire than met the eye. “You’re the only reporter in Metropolis to have landed an exclusive interview with Superman. And not just one, but several. How’d you manage that?”

Of course, that wasn’t a question Clark could answer honestly, and he’d probably only sound crazy if he did. “Certainly not by giving away trade secrets to every smooth-talking billionaire who asks,” he said instead, teasing. This elicited another eyebrow raise.

“You have a lot of experience with smooth-talking billionaires?”

Oh God, were they  _ flirting _ ? Was Clark Kent flirting with... Bruce Wayne? Clark shook himself internally. Time to shut that shit down. “Far more experience with abrasive, condescending ones.” At the confused look from Bruce, he clarified, “Lex Luthor.”

That seemed to explain everything. Bruce chuckled and shook his head and the tension that had begun to build between them instantly dissipated. “Ah, yes. I’ve had the misfortune of running in the same circles as that man for years. I’ve never met anyone so genuinely unpleasant to be around.” Now it was Clark’s turn to chuckle. “What?” Bruce asked.

“This is our second time interacting and you’ve done nothing but complain about other people. Is there anyone in this world you actually like?” Clark preempted Bruce before he could go for the easy answer: “Other than your kid.”

Bruce took a moment to consider this. “My butler,” he said after a moment of silence. That would be Alfred Pennyworth, Clark knew, who had also served as Bruce’s legal guardian after his parents’ untimely death; he’d looked the man up after Bruce had mentioned him at their last meeting. “My CFO,” Bruce provided after another pause. Clark waited for him to come up with more names, but that seemed to be the end of it.

“That’s an extremely short list,” he observed. Clark couldn’t imagine having that few friends. He was at least friendly, if not friends, with everyone at the  _ Daily Planet _ . He had a great relationship with his parents. And then there were the other superheroes he interacted with as Superman; Wonder Woman, surely, would consider him a friend, and Batman… well, that was a bit more complicated.

Bruce, however, didn’t seem fazed by Clark’s frank assessment of his friendlessness. “It’s a list you might have a chance of making it onto if you keep conveniently interviewing me at these types of events,” he said instead.

They were bordering on flirtation again, and Clark couldn’t fathom why the infamous Bruce Wayne would flirt with him. It was entirely possible he was misreading the situation. It was also entirely possible Bruce Wayne flirted with everyone he met who was at least passably attractive; he had that reputation, but Clark’s interactions with him thus far had led him to believe Bruce wasn’t all his reputation claimed he was. Either way, Clark had to remind himself he was here for business, not for pleasure… not that he would ever consider such a thing with Bruce Wayne, of all people. Even if Bruce had proven himself to be far different from Clark’s initial expectations, and not entirely unpleasant company.

“I’m flattered,” he said flatly. “I do need a few quotes, though, if it’s not too much trouble.”

This deflection proved even more effective than Clark had hoped, and by the time he’d gotten a few sentences out of Bruce about the Wayne Foundation, he’d almost managed to convince himself he’d imagined the flirting. Bruce told him about the hurdles the Foundation had to overcome in its first few months, the strides it had made, and what he hoped it would accomplish in the following year, and when Clark asked him his thoughts on the organization that was hosting the night’s event to raise money for the homeless, Bruce gave his frank assessment of their efforts and motivations. He was the ideal source, Clark thought with satisfaction. Cat would be pleased.

“Did you get everything you need for your article?” Bruce asked when they reached a lull in the conversation.

Clark nodded. “Plenty. One more thing, though, and this is off the record,” he added as a thought struck him. He shut off the voice recording on his phone. “How’s the kid?” He was a journalist, after all, which meant he was naturally curious, and he couldn’t help but wonder how a man like Bruce Wayne was managing to raise a child.

“Things are going… well,” Bruce said thoughtfully. “I more or less expected to completely screw things up by now, which didn’t happen, and I consider that an unqualified success.”

“I think it’ll all work out,” Clark said with a chuckle. “You know, I was adopted.” This was a fact Clark was historically quite open with. He wasn’t ashamed of the fact that he was adopted; his parents were incredible people and probably the reason he was living a relatively normal human life instead of being dissected in a secret government facility somewhere in the middle of the desert.

This certainly caught Bruce’s interest. “Really?” He seemed to be taking this information in. “And you turned out alright.”

“I like to think so.”

Bruce checked his watch and frowned. “I’d love to pick your brain about that sometime, but — speaking of adopted children — I promised mine I’d be home by eleven.” Bruce gave him a friendly nod. “Until the next time we run into each other, then?”

“Sure,” Clark promised. He hadn’t expected to run into Bruce here tonight, and yet here they were, so he knew better than to assume this would never happen again.

“Happy holidays, Mr. Kent. Clark,” Bruce quickly corrected himself as he turned in the direction of the exit.

“Happy holidays.”

Clark left shortly after Bruce did, satisfied he had enough material to write a decent article on the gala. He flew around Metropolis a few times, welcoming the bracing wind that caught in his scarlet cape. The weather forecast promised snow that weekend, and he could almost smell it in the air.

By the time he finally returned to his apartment he was chilled to the bone and wide awake for hours of writing. He whipped up a quick story about the event before opening his browser and entering a few searches. His brief discussion with Bruce about the early days of the Wayne Foundation and its plans for the new year had piqued his curiosity; he wanted to know more.

As Clark researched, an idea formed in his mind, and a rather good one, at that. He wasn’t the type to attribute meaningless coincidences to fate or destiny, but it was convenient that he’d run into Bruce Wayne twice in so many months. Truth be told, he was always looking for something other than Superman to write about to avoid getting pigeonholed as “the Superman guy” any more than he already was. This might be just the story to pitch to Perry come New Year, when the editor was always looking for fresh ideas.

As long as Clark had a cooperative, friendly, willing source, he might as well take advantage of that, right?


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story already has more plot than anything I’ve ever written.

Clark approached Perry White the first week of January, when the  _ Daily Planet _ ’s editor-in-chief was notoriously open to new ideas and almost certain to approve his proposal. He knocked on Perry’s door and, once Perry waved for him to enter, cut straight to the chase, knowing his boss hated nothing more than employees who wasted his precious time.

“I have an idea for an article,” he said, taking a seat in the empty chair that sat across Perry’s desk for occasions like this one.

Perry pried his eyes away from his computer screen to look at Clark expectantly. “Okay. Shoot.”

Clark had done this song and dance a million times. He remembered how anxious he’d been the first few times he’d pitched a story, in his early days working for the  _ Planet _ ; those nerves were long gone, replaced by the confidence his years of experience had earned him. “I’d like to do a feature on Bruce Wayne,” he said frankly. “Specifically on his charity work with the Wayne Foundation. It’s relatively new — I attended the launch back in October when Cat got the flu — but it’s already done a lot of great things in Gotham. There’s been some coverage of it but nothing in-depth.” He drew a breath, then finished with his main selling point: “I think it would be uplifting.”

Perry smirked at that. Clark had a reputation among his colleagues for his optimistic attitude, unusual for a journalist. He’d always gravitated toward stories that he thought might restore their readers’ faith in humanity after they’d digested all the usual news about murder, corruption, and war. “Uplifting, huh?” Perry repeated. He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest, his smirk transforming into a more genuine smile. Clark repressed his own smile, because he knew this was a good sign; this was the look Perry got when someone brought him a half-decent idea. “Sounds like that’d be right up your alley. But what makes you think you can get access to Bruce Wayne?”

“I’ve gotten a few quotes out of him at the last two events I covered for Cat: the launch I mentioned in October, and another charity gala last month, around the holidays. He’s surprisingly open. I think he likes to talk about the Foundation.”

“And why wouldn’t he? It’s good publicity.” Perry paused, looking thoughtful, then spoke again. “Alright. If you think you can do it, go for it. Send me an update once you’re in touch with Wayne’s people.” He straightened back up and returned his attention to his computer, Clark’s signal to leave. “How’s the latest Superman article coming along?” he asked, only half-paying attention.

“I’ll have it on your desk tomorrow morning,” Clark answered as he stood.

“That’s what I like to hear. Good work, Smallville.”

Clark had no sooner returned to his desk and begun drafting an email to the Wayne Foundation’s public relations team than he heard the telltale sound of a desk chair rolling toward him. Lois had her phone in one hand, typing, and used the other to maneuver her chair from her cubicle into Clark’s.

“You look pleased,” she said, even though she’d yet to look up from her phone. “Get an idea approved?”

“I did,” Clark said, and at the sound of his voice, Lois finally met his gaze. She raised her eyebrows expectantly, wearing a look that said,  _ Tell me more _ . “I’m writing a feature article on the Wayne Foundation.”

Lois frowned. “Haven’t heard of it. Is that Bruce Wayne, of Wayne Enterprises?”

Clark nodded. “I ran into him at both of the events I covered for Cat. He has a lot to say about this new foundation of his, and I’ve been researching it over the holidays. It seems like exactly what Gotham needs right now. Everyone knows Gotham’s crime rates are the highest in the country, but did you know it also has the highest income inequality index?”

“I’m not surprised. But do you really think a little charity work will make a difference? Seems to me like comprehensive structural reform would do a lot more good.”

“That’s exactly what I’m hoping to highlight in the article,” Clark said, excited Lois was thinking along the same lines. “I want to use what the Wayne Foundation is doing to demonstrate the major deficiencies in Gotham’s municipal government: underfunded social services, a corrupt police department, politicians with alleged ties to organized crime… the list goes on. So on the one hand, you’ve got this inspirational story of a billionaire using his wealth and privilege for good, while on the other, you’ve got an exposé of a city government that has failed on such a fundamental level that it needs an altruistic billionaire and a bat-themed vigilante just to keep it functioning.”

Lois grinned. “I love it,” she said. “It almost sounds like something I would write. Minus the heartwarming parts.”

Clark rolled his eyes. The stories Lois preferred to write were the ones Clark tended to avoid, stories that enabled her to venture into the dark and gritty underbelly of the world that only the most intrepid investigative reporters were prepared to unearth. It was apparently an effective career strategy, given that it had taken Lois to any number of exotic, exciting locations around the world and even earned her a Pulitzer.

“What can I say?” Clark said, nudging Lois’ chair in the direction of her cubicle so they could both get back to work. “I learned from the best.”

Clark sent off the email to the Wayne Foundation’s PR team and got to work editing that Superman article he needed to get to Perry. Shortly after he returned from lunch, his phone rang: an unknown number. It was the sort of call anyone but a journalist would ignore, assuming whoever was on the other end was either a telemarketer or a scammer.

Clark answered it.

“This is Clark Kent with the  _ Daily Planet _ ,” he said expectantly.

A familiar voice answered, deep and gravelly: “This is Bruce Wayne.”

“Mr. Wayne!” Clark was shocked; this was not how interview requests with billionaires typically went down. Then again, how many times had Bruce Wayne managed to surprise him in the past few months? Perhaps, Clark thought, he needed to learn to expect the unexpected from this particular billionaire. “That was fast. I assumed I’d have to go through a few rounds of email tag with your publicist before I got you on the phone.”

“Would that be any way for me to treat my favorite reporter?” Bruce smoothly replied. Coming from anyone else, that line would have elicited an eye roll from Clark. For some reason, coming from Bruce, it didn’t. “Tell me about this ‘feature article’ idea of yours.”

Clark threw himself into professionalism mode, eager for the distraction from Bruce’s flirtatious nature. “It’s pretty straightforward,” he explained. “I want to highlight the work the Wayne Foundation is doing in Gotham. I’m sure you know as well as I do that the public opinion of billionaires isn’t exactly at an all-time high. I thought it might be a breath of fresh air to show someone doing something useful with their wealth instead of hoarding it away or spending it all on themselves.”

“And it would be a breath of fresh air for me to finally have something written about my charity work instead of my personal life,” Bruce added. Clark knew all about the Gotham tabloids that seemed to have dedicated entire columns to speculating who Bruce Wayne was having sex with at any given time. He imagined that sort of thing got quite frustrating.

“Trust me,” Clark assured Bruce, “I intend this article to be extremely focused. I’ll only mention aspects of your personal life that are relevant to the Foundation.”

“Alright,” Bruce said. “I trust you.” Clark got the odd impression Bruce Wayne didn’t utter that particular sentence all that often, but he wasn’t sure why. He chalked it up to reporter’s intuition. Bruce continued, “I assume you’ll need to schedule an interview with me at some point?”

“Yes,” Clark said eagerly. “Actually, if you’re amenable to it, I’ll need a lot more than that. I’d like to get the full picture of your foundation’s work and how it fits into the modern landscape of Gotham. I was thinking we start with an in-depth interview, and then I was hoping I could see some of the Foundation’s efforts firsthand. I’ll talk to volunteers, the people whose lives have been impacted by the Foundation, other members of the Foundation’s Board of Directors… I’m aiming for a publication date in early March, by the way.”

“That’s a quick turnaround, given everything you’ve just described.”

Clark smiled to himself. “I work well under pressure,” he confessed.

“That’s something we have in common.” Bruce paused briefly, then, “I’ll tell my publicist to contact you right away to work out the details, and she’ll put you in touch with my scheduler.”

“Sounds good.”

No sooner had Clark hung up the phone than Lois came rolling back into his cubicle, taking him by the arm of his chair and dragging him in front of her computer. “You need to see this,” was all she said. She gestured to her screen, on which she’d pulled up an article from the  _ Gotham Gazette _ : “BATMAN NO LONGER WORKING ALONE? MASKED CRUSADER GAINS SURPRISINGLY COLORFUL SIDEKICK.”

Underneath the headline was a grainy image of two moving figures. The first was a familiar silhouette: Batman, dressed in cape and cowl, vaulting from one roof to another, a dark shadow against an even darker night. The second, however, really caught Clark’s eye: a much shorter, much thinner, and, yes, much more colorful caped figure leapt after Batman. Clark shook his head and gaped.

“This can’t be real,” he muttered, half to himself and half to Lois. “Batman hates working with other people. I can’t imagine him taking on a sidekick.”

“It’s in the  _ Gotham Gazette _ ,” Lois replied, gesturing unnecessarily to the paper’s logo at the top of the screen. “They’re not exactly known for printing fake news.”

“I’ll swing by Gotham tonight to check it out.”

True to his word, almost as soon as the sun went down, Clark jetted off to Gotham, super senses fully engaged until he located Batman thwarting a bank robbery in the financial district. He waited patiently for Batman to wrap things up and hand the criminals off to the GCPD, not wanting to interfere. Just as the police disappeared around a corner in their squad cars on their way back to the station, a masked figure in red, yellow, and green appeared from within the bank. Clark froze. It was the same small — _child-sized_, he realized with a jolt of concern — figure from the photo in the _Gotham Gazette_.

“I untied the security guards!” the figure announced in a distinctly prepubescent voice.

“Good work, Robin.” The tone in Batman’s voice had Clark doing yet another double take; the typically gruff, no-nonsense vigilante sounded almost… parental? Clark descended from the roof of the bank, making his presence known. He had to get to the bottom of this.

Batman’s colorful sidekick — Robin, Clark surmised — went bug-eyed the instant Clark appeared, staggering back a step and squeaking a note of surprise. Batman turned more slowly, leveling Clark with an exasperated glare. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.

“I saw your… friend,” Clark said, not sure what else to call this Robin (“sidekick” sounded too condescending), “On the news. I thought I’d introduce myself.” That was a lie, and Batman probably knew it, but this Robin kid didn’t have to. “How, uh… how old is he?”

“Twelve,” Robin provided, voice barely more than a whisper, clearly in awe of Clark.

“None of your business,” Batman said at the same time, much louder.

“Right,” Clark said slowly, still not sure what to make of all this. “Well. Hi. I’m Superman.” He extended a hand to Robin, who looked at it confused for a moment before seeming to register that  _ the _ Superman was indeed talking to  _ him _ .

“Hi,” he said, trying to add some bravado into his tone and failing. “I’m Robin.”

“Nice to meet you. I’m sure I’ll be seeing you around.” He wasn’t sure what else to say. His plan had been to verify that Batman had, indeed, taken on a sidekick. He’d been so doubtful that this could possibly be the case that he hadn’t bothered to plan beyond that point.

“Wow,” Robin said.

Not wanting to overstay his welcome, Clark said his farewells and took off into the sky, catching a snippet of Batman and Robin’s conversation as he departed.

“You’re friends with  _ Superman _ ?” Robin exclaimed.

“We’re more like coworkers,” Batman corrected him. Clark chuckled at that. Even if he was no longer Mr. “I Work Alone,” Batman certainly hadn’t changed in his attitude toward Superman. And he probably never would.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay, I got a new job and it’s kept me very busy. This story is going in a completely different direction from what I expected but we’re gonna roll with it because this new direction is fun and exciting.

The day of Clark’s first interview with Bruce Wayne for his Wayne Foundation piece was, according to the weather report, the coldest of the season. Biting winds whipped down from the north and the promise of snow lingered in the air. Clark bundled up and flew to Gotham, arriving at the hulking black Wayne Enterprises building a respectable fifteen minutes before he was expected. He grabbed coffee from a shop around the corner and checked in with the security guards manning the front desk in the lobby, who inspected his ID, handed him a visitor badge, and pointed him in the right direction.

Clark rode the elevator all the way to the top floor. The elevator’s glass walls offered an impressive view of the city below, stretching all the way to mainland New Jersey. When the doors dinged open, he strode over to the receptionist and offered a friendly smile in greeting. “Clark Kent,” he said, although his visitor badge already displayed his name in bold, black letters. “I have a ten o’clock appointment with Bruce Wayne.”

The receptionist smiled back, glancing between Clark and the computer screen in front of her, clicking her mouse a few times before nodding in confirmation. “He’s just getting out of a meeting downstairs,” she said. “He should be right up. Feel free to take a seat.” She gestured to a trio of leather chairs behind him and turned her attention back to whatever she’d been working on before Clark arrived.

Clark passed only a few minutes in the waiting area before the elevator doors opened to his right and a familiar figure emerged. Clark stood, straightening his jacket and extending a hand when Bruce turned to greet him.

“Good to see you again,” Bruce said, sounding genuine as he shook Clark’s hand with a firm grip. He guided Clark toward a set of double doors that opened into what Clark could only imagine was the billionaire’s office. He was struck by what little resemblance this cavernous space bore to his cramped cubicle at the  _ Daily Planet _ . Whereas Clark’s cubicle was cluttered with papers and all manner of office supplies and decorated with pictures of his family back home in Kansas, Bruce’s was pristine: papers were stacked neatly or tucked away in a filing cabinet behind the desk, pens and pencils sat in a little metal cup by a pair of computer monitors, and the only sign of personalization was a single framed photograph of a dark-haired kid Clark recognized from his research as Richard Grayson.

And then there was the matter of location. Clark was used to working in a large room with the rest of the  _ Planet _ staff. The nearest window was two cubicles over and the short walls of his cubicle afforded little illusion of privacy. Even Perry was constantly visible through the glass wall at the front of his office, and his sole window looked out onto an unattractive alley between their building and the one next to it. For comparison, Bruce’s office had almost as much square footage as Clark’s apartment, as well as real wooden doors. Two of the room’s walls were floor-to-ceiling windows affording a similar view to the one from the glass elevator, only looking out in the other direction, toward the harbor.

Instead of sitting at his desk, Bruce gestured toward a pair of chairs bookending a glass table. Clark took a seat while Bruce poured coffee into a mug from a French press before joining him. “Did you take the train in this morning?” he asked, making small talk. Clark nodded, because it wasn’t like he could say he’d physically flown there.

“I emailed your publicist a list of sample questions a few days ago,” Clark said, preempting any follow-up questions about the quality of his commute to Gotham that would force him to lie again. He was accustomed to lying to conceal his superhero identity, but that didn’t mean he enjoyed it. “Mostly covering topics like what the Wayne Foundation is, what it does, what your role is, and what your motivations were in founding it. Hopefully you had a chance to look them over.” Bruce nodded silently, taking a sip of coffee. Clark continued. “If you don’t have any objections, should we get straight to it?”

“By all means.”

Clark dove straight in, setting his phone on the table between them to record their conversation. “Tell me about the Wayne Foundation,” he began. “What’s your mission, and how do you plan to accomplish it?”

It was, as usual, easy to get Bruce to talk about his charity work. He went into great detail, even more detail than Clark would probably need for the article, although he had no complaints about that. He always preferred an overly talkative interviewee to a taciturn one.

While he listened to Bruce’s thorough explanations of his plans for the Foundation, occasionally pausing to prompt Bruce to clarify or expand on something, Clark was struck by how different this Bruce Wayne was from the Bruce Wayne he’d initially met on the balcony outside Wayne Manor. It amazed him how easily he seemed to compartmentalize the different facets of his identity. Wayne Foundation President Bruce Wayne was all business, with the slightest hint of softness when he spoke with passion about the Foundation’s work thus far; he was the perfect professional picture of a compassionate billionaire. The Bruce Wayne Clark had met on the balcony had been sardonic, borderline flirtatious, and just a little bit arrogant; he had an edge to him that enticed Clark even though he knew people like that almost always spelled trouble.

It was difficult for Clark to reconcile these two versions of Bruce in his mind. He found himself wondering which was the real one, or if perhaps neither of them were real, if there was a third side to Bruce that he’d yet to discover. The reporter in him desperately wanted to know. And the part of him that had spent most of his life segmenting his own identity into separate spheres – Clark Kent on one side, Superman on the other – wanted to ask Bruce Wayne how he managed to make it all seem so effortless.

Once they’d covered the basics of the Foundation, Clark delved deeper, hoping to explore the personal side of things to add a bit of emotion to the piece. “What made you decide to start your own charitable organization?” he asked. Bruce considered the question for a moment before answering.

“I’d been thinking about it for a while. My parents were extremely dedicated to their charity work, and they made a point to involve me whenever they could. It seemed like the best way to honor their legacy.” Clark remained silent. He knew Bruce Wayne didn’t like to talk about his parents – he was famous for avoiding questions about them – and Clark didn’t want to interrupt such a rare opportunity. “What convinced me to finally go through with it was adopting Dick. I was around his age when I lost my parents, only I was in a much better situation. They left me the house and enough money that I would never have to work a day in my life. That wasn’t the case for Dick and it’s not the case for the hundreds of kids in Gotham who get passed around an ineffective, underfunded social services system until they’re eighteen, at which point they’re left to their own devices. I’ve always thought there has to be a better way to do things, if we spent more resources on it and allocated those resources more effectively.”

“And how does your work to help the victims of crime fit into the picture?” Clark asked.

“Gotham has one of the highest crime rates in the country and it’s unfortunately one of the primary factors tearing families apart,” Bruce explained. “Plenty of children who end up in social services lost their parents to crime. I’m not just talking about children whose parents were murdered; they’re in the minority. We’re mostly talking about children whose parents were convicted of crimes, and who can no longer parent their children either because they’re in jail or because they’ve been declared unfit for some other reason.”

That made sense to Clark. He glanced at his watch to make sure they weren’t going over time and found that they’d been talking for nearly an hour. He ran through the last few questions he wanted to ask Bruce as quickly as possible, ending the interview right on time: eleven o’clock on the dot. He smiled, pleased with himself and with all the valuable information he’d gathered for the article.

“I think that’s everything I need,” Clark said, ending the recording on his phone and rising to his feet. He reached out to shake Bruce’s hand once more. “Thank you for your time.” He paused mid-handshake, suddenly remembering: “Oh, one more thing. We need to schedule a photo shoot with the  _ Planet _ ’s photographer, Jimmy Olsen. It doesn’t have to be right away; any time before the publication date is fine. I’ll work out the details with your scheduler.”

Bruce nodded. “Great. I assume you’ll be returning to Metropolis for the rest of the day?” More small talk. Clark hadn’t pegged Bruce as the small talk type, but the man had already blown so many of his preconceptions out of the water that he couldn’t be surprised.

“Yeah. I still have other stories to work on while this one is in progress.” The  _ Daily Planet _ was understaffed – what newspaper wasn’t these days? – and everyone on the team covered as many stories as they could all at once. Clark didn’t mind; he enjoyed being kept busy.

When Bruce next spoke, it was as if he’d flipped a switch, transforming in an instant from the philanthropic billionaire he’d been during the interview to the more casual, congenial man Clark was, at this point, beginning to consider an acquaintance, albeit a billionaire acquaintance who sometimes flirted with him. It was far from the strangest thing that had happened to Clark. “Any chance you’re available for lunch?”

Clark raised his eyebrows, admittedly caught off guard. “Right now?” he asked, knowing he sounded like an idiot but for some reason unable to pull himself together. “With you?” He mentally took back his earlier claim that Bruce Wayne was no longer able to surprise him. Just when he thought he knew where they stood, that man went and shook things up again. Clark seemed to be drawn to people like that. When they’d been in a relationship, Lois had always managed to keep him on his toes. And then there was Batman, who, after years of the two of them working together, was still largely an enigma to Clark. On some level, he felt like they understood each other, but on another, deeper level, he knew they’d barely scratched the surface.

Bruce smirked, an expression Clark was already intimately familiar with. “Even billionaires have to eat,” he said.

“Sure.” Clark shrugged his shoulders. Something inside him that he didn’t even thing he could blame on journalistic curiosity wanted nothing more than to spend more time with this version of Bruce that seemed to be more honest than the face he’d put on for the interview. He made a show of checking his watch, as if he really did have to take the train back to Metropolis, instead of just flying there at supersonic speeds and arriving in seconds. “I’ve got time. What did you have in mind?”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have decided that I am only sticking to the parts of comic canon that I like, as is my right as a comic fan.

They left the Wayne Enterprises building and walked just a few blocks to a crowded cafe that was clearly a popular lunchtime destination for the white collar workers in the area. With a half hour until noon, the full force of the day’s lunch rush had yet to flood into the streets, and after ordering coffee and sandwiches, the pair were able to find a table, nestled into a corner by the window. Other tables were occupied by similar groups of two or three professionally attired men and women chatting over their meals. At a counter lining the opposite wall, individuals sat on stools hunched over their laptops, most with headphones blocking out the dozens of conversations taking place behind them.

Bruce shrugged off the wool coat he’d donned for the short walk there and took a sip of his still steaming coffee. “Tell me about yourself, Clark,” he said, unprompted. Clark raised his eyebrows, wondering what a guy like Bruce Wayne could possibly want to know about a guy like Clark Kent. “You’ve just spent the past hour learning about me; let’s hear about you.”

“For the record, I learned very little about you,” Clark countered in between bites of his sandwich. “You mostly talked about the Foundation. But yeah, sure. What do you want to know?” Clark wasn’t accustomed to being on the receiving end of an interview, but apart from the whole Superman thing, he was a relatively open book. He wasn’t the type to guard his thoughts and feelings.  _ Like some people _ , he thought, the scowling image of Batman flashing in his mind. He dispelled it with a small smile.

“Where are you from, originally?” Bruce asked. “Not Metropolis.”

Bruce wasn’t the first to correctly guess Clark wasn’t native to the city. “What gave it away?”

“You’re too nice to be from Metropolis.” Bruce delivered this judgment with a straight face, but there was a glint of humor in his eyes. Clark chuckled. Although he’d somewhat successfully adopted a more metropolitan way of speaking, his Midwestern manners were too ingrained into his sense of self for him to ever abandon them for the gruff, no-nonsense behavior patterns of his urban friends and coworkers.

“I’m from Kansas,” he revealed.

“Anywhere I’d have heard of?”

Clark shook his head. “Definitely not.” He couldn’t imagine a man like Bruce in a place like Smallville. The billionaire would stick out like a sore thumb with his tailored clothes, luxury cars, and a complexion that looked like it hadn’t seen the sun in years.

“What was it like growing up in a small town?”

“I liked it,” Clark answered with a shrug. “Everyone knows everyone else, which has its pros and cons. On the one hand, gossip travels fast, and everyone is in everyone else’s business. You can never just disappear into the crowd like you can here or in Metropolis. But there’s a sense of community that’s hard to beat. And I spent a lot of time outdoors, which I think is good for a kid.” Clark wanted to have children someday, but a part of him couldn’t imagine what it would be like raising kids in the city. It would certainly be different from his own upbringing.

“Would you ever move back?”

“I don’t think so,” Clark answered immediately. He’d given the question a lot of thought after he’d graduated college with his journalism degree. He couldn’t have made a living in a place like Smallville, but he could have moved somewhere like Kansas City, a compromise that would place him close to the home he was familiar with but still provide some career opportunities. That is, if he hadn’t also felt compelled to consider where he would be most useful as a superhero. Kansas City wasn’t exactly a hotbed of villainous activity. Living in Metropolis allowed him to do the most good, and he’d come to consider the city his second home, in part because of the wonderful support network he’d cultivated among the  _ Daily Planet _ staff.

Of course, Clark couldn’t explain any of that to Bruce, so he told only part of the truth: “I became a journalist because I wanted to be at the center of the action,” he said. “There’s not a lot of action in Smallville, Kansas.” He decided to turn the tables, learn a little about Bruce while they were both here and discussing the past. “What about you? Would you ever leave Gotham?”

Bruce’s answer was just as immediate. “No.”

“Not even to retire to… God, I don’t even know where rich people retire.” Clark cast about for the most ridiculous retirement destination he could think of. “A private island?”

Bruce rolled his eyes but spoke seriously. “I can’t imagine myself ever retiring,” he admitted.

Clark could relate. He could certainly imagine himself retiring, he just didn’t think, realistically, it would ever happen. He wasn’t sure what the odds were of making it to retirement age when you regularly put your life on the line to save the world, but they couldn’t be high.

“What about your parents? What were they like when you were growing up?” Bruce continued. He had a guarded look in his eyes, the same look he’d had when he’d briefly mentioned his parents’ charity work during the interview. The topic of parents was clearly even more of a sore spot than Clark had imagined. As a result, Clark decided not to give too many details. He didn’t want to rub it in:  _ My parents are alive and yours are dead. _

“They’re the best,” Clark said, unable to keep from smiling at the thought of Jonathan and Martha Kent. “Loving, supportive… I wouldn’t be where I am without them. They taught me everything I know. Work hard, save money, be kind to strangers. Do the right thing.”

“They sound like good people.”

“They are. I’m lucky to have them.”

A brief, awkward silence passed between the two of them and Clark wondered if he’d said too much. Thankfully, Bruce picked the conversation back up before too long. “How old were you when they adopted you?”

Clark wondered if Bruce had sensed, in their previous conversation about adoption, that Clark was open to discussing the matter, or if he was just the type of person who asked potentially uncomfortable questions regardless of the emotion they might stir up. He suspected a mixture of both. “Practically a newborn,” he said, conscious of the fact that he had to omit a lot of significant information when he talked about this part of his life. “I never knew any other parents than the ones I grew up with. I think that makes things easier, in a way. But there’s always a part of you that wonders…” He trailed off, not wanting to get too deep into his feelings on the matter with someone like Bruce, who was still a relative stranger, an acquaintance at most.

“Was it a closed adoption?” Bruce paused and added, “Sorry if this is too personal, but you can understand why I’m so interested in hearing about your experience.”

Clark nodded. Bruce had adopted Dick Grayson less than a year ago. Their relationship was undoubtedly still developing, the two still figuring each other out, finding their rhythm. He couldn’t imagine what that was like. He had no frame of reference for it. But he was more than happy to offer whatever perspective he had that might be useful. “No, it’s fine,” he said honestly. “I really don’t mind talking about it. Um, I did eventually learn more about my birth parents, but I could never meet them. They died.”

Another awkward pause swelled between them. Clark tried not to read too far into it. He wondered if Bruce was thinking the same thing he was:  _ That’s something we have in common. _ He changed the topic to something less fraught.

“What was it like for you, growing up… well, rich?” If Bruce could ask potentially uncomfortable questions, well, so could he. He’d always been curious what it would have been like, not to grow up with the specter of money issues constantly hanging over your head. His parents had done all they could to shield Clark from their financial problems, but it was impossible to keep children permanently in the dark about that sort of thing. He saw the bills that came in the mail, overheard snippets of tense conversation, and over time put the pieces together in his head. His parents had had it better than many others – they always had a roof over their heads and food on the table – but like any working class family, they didn’t have it easy. “I can’t even imagine it. Like, where did you go on vacation?”

Clark’s parents had occasionally taken him camping, or to visit relatives who lived within driving distance. His wealthier classmates had gone on trips to Disney World. But the only people he’d known growing up in Smallville with any international experience were veterans who’d been stationed overseas.

“Europe, mostly,” Bruce said. Yeah, Clark didn’t think any of his schoolmates had gone on trips to Europe. He’d been there plenty of times – one of the benefits of being able to fly “faster than a speeding bullet,” as the cliché went – although he was usually there on a mission to save the world from evil and didn’t spend a lot of time sightseeing.

“Do you speak any other languages? For some reason I have this idea in my head that all old money types speak French.”

Bruce chuckled. “Yes, I speak French. I speak… several languages.” The fact that he didn’t elaborate left Clark assuming they’d be there a while if Bruce listed them all. He was impressed, but not as impressed as he would be if he didn’t know a certain Amazon who could speak every language known to man, plus a few more that had been lost to time.

Clark peppered Bruce with a few more questions about the lifestyle of the fabulously wealthy and Bruce continued to humor him. He didn’t push it too far, sticking to light topics: “How many rooms are in your house?” he asked, to which Bruce answered, “That depends on whether or not you count secret ones hidden behind bookshelves.” Clark couldn’t tell whether or not he was joking. Knowing rich people – knowing this rich person in particular – he was probably being entirely serious. And then, of course, “Do you own a yacht?” The answer was yes, or, more specifically, “What self-respecting billionaire doesn’t own a yacht?”, which had made Clark laugh.

After glancing at his watch and seeing that they’d passed another hour in each other’s company, Clark decided to wrap things up. He did have to get back to work, after all. “ _ Now _ I feel like I’ve learned something about you,” he said. The interview had, of course, yielded plenty of good information for his article, but it hadn’t taught him much about Bruce on a personal level. Now he knew more.

“Likewise,” Bruce said as they stood and deposited their coffee cups in the trash on their way out the door. The cafe had gotten much busier over the course of their conversation, and their vacated table was quickly snatched up. “I hope I haven’t kept you too long. I wouldn’t want to get you in trouble with your boss.”

“I’ll just tell him the interview ran long.” They reached the street corner where they would have to part ways, one direction leading to the train station that Clark was ostensibly returning to and the other leading to Wayne Enterprises. “Thank you for lunch,” Clark said, reaching out for another handshake. “I’ll be in touch about future interviews.”

Bruce nodded, and Clark began to walk off, only to turn when he heard Bruce call out his name. “Clark.” Once he had Clark’s attention, he smiled – a genuine smile, not a smirk – and said, “Have a nice day.” As their gazes locked, Clark noticed, in a way he hadn’t before, just how attractive Bruce was. He’d known all along the man was objectively gorgeous, but until that moment that fact hadn’t mattered that much to him. But something in Bruce’s words, in the look in his eyes, shifted Clark’s entire perception; something clicked into place, and now it was all he could think about.

Clark left, overcome by a dizzying, breathless sensation and the sudden realization that he had ended up in an entirely different situation than he’d intended.


	6. Chapter 6

Clark’s lovestruck teenager days were behind him. The awkward kid who’d been so nervous to ask his crush to go to prom with him almost seemed like a completely different person. Clark now knew how to handle his feelings like an adult instead of letting them get the better of him. It was part of the reason he and Lois had remained on such good terms after breaking up: Neither of them held any grudges about the disagreements and incompatibilities that had facilitated their split. They both recognized that their friendship was far more important than any petty desire they might have had, in those first few months, to cling to the resentments that had driven them apart.

It was with this same level of maturity that Clark managed to get on with his life despite his realization that he was undeniably, irreversibly attracted to Bruce Wayne. Obviously he knew he couldn’t act on these feelings. He was writing a story about Bruce Wayne. The man was his source. It would be extremely unprofessional, and Clark was certainly not willing to violate his journalistic integrity and put his own career at risk for the sake of an attractive billionaire he barely knew. Not that he even had an opportunity to do so. Aside from engaging in some largely innocent flirtatious banter, Bruce had done nothing to indicate he was interested in Clark,  _ really _ interested, in more than a passing fashion.

Clark was hardly the first person in the world to develop feelings for someone he couldn’t be with. It happened to people all the time. He’d get over it.

But that didn’t mean he didn’t think about it. He was, after all, only human. (Well, not exactly. But Kryptonian hormones were similar enough that it hardly made a difference.) For example, the evening after their lunch at the cafe, when he returned home from working a few more hours in Metropolis, he lounged in front of the television, only half-paying attention to the baking competition he was binge watching on Netflix, and wondered what exactly it was about Bruce Wayne that had captivated him so thoroughly that he hadn’t even noticed it until he was in too deep to pull himself out.

It wasn’t just his physical appearance, although that was certainly part of it. Bruce had an attractive face with high cheekbones, strong eyebrows, and startlingly blue eyes. It was obvious that he took care of himself – he was always well-dressed and impeccably groomed – a fact Clark could appreciate. Too many men used their masculinity as an excuse not to wash their face or comb their hair or buy clothes that fit. Not only had Clark paid attention to this as a bisexual man, he also routinely overheard Cat Grant complaining: “Clark, I swear, you’re the only man I know who puts in an effort.”

And then there was Bruce’s body. Clark didn’t know what the man’s workout routine was, but clearly it was working.

But there were millions, if not billions, of attractive men in the world, and none of them intrigued Clark like Bruce did. Clark knew he had a type. Man or woman, he was attracted to people who were passionate about something. Lois was passionate about her work, about ferreting out darkness in the world – violence, corruption, greed – and exposing it to the light. Bruce, meanwhile, was passionate about his foundation. And Clark was attracted to people who knew their worth, who toed the line between confidence and arrogance but didn’t quite cross it. He was attracted to intelligence, and wit, and, above all, complexity. With Lois, he had never been bored. With Bruce, he realized, he hadn’t either. He wanted to figure the man out. He wanted to uncover all his secrets.

It would never happen. But that didn’t stop Clark from wanting it.

Clark didn’t have much time to dwell on it, though, because less than a week after his lunch with Bruce, a polar vortex swept through the Northeast. Metropolis was blanketed in fifteen inches of snow, but they were hardly the worst off. Gotham was hit with a deadly one-two punch of a snowstorm and a dastardly plot by Mr. Freeze, who sabotaged the city’s power grid and plunged its residents into darkness and cold. With crime in Metropolis at a standstill as everyone, even the thieves and drug dealers, was holed up in their homes, Superman had flown to Gotham to lend a hand.

It was rare for Batman to accept another hero’s help, but even he recognized the importance of having all hands on deck. While he and Robin battled Mr. Freeze, Superman worked with the police, emergency responders, and volunteer workers to make sure the people of Gotham were kept warm and alive. Once power was restored and Clark was assured that everything was under control – Gotham’s people returned to their heated homes, the homeless kept warm in shelters that always overcrowded around this time of year – he sought out Batman and Robin.

When Clark found them, Batman and Robin looked exhausted and cold. Robin’s teeth were chattering, his nose and ears were pink, and he was bundled in a thick parka, which he wore over his red, yellow, and green costume. He perked up slightly when he saw Superman approach, grinning widely and holding up a gloved hand in a friendly wave.

“How are things in the city?” Batman asked, all business.

“Back to normal, thanks to you two,” Clark said with a smile. He held out a hand between them, which Batman shook reluctantly. “Good work.” He paused a moment before his curious side got the better of him. “So, what was Mr. Freeze’s evil plan this time?”

He couldn’t see Batman rolling his eyes behind his mask, but he could definitely sense it. “Same as usual,” he said. “Freezing Gotham.”

That tracked. Mr. Freeze was, in Clark’s humble opinion, by far the most predictable of Batman’s villains. The Joker, the Riddler, Harley Quinn, they were the wild cards. Mr. Freeze, on the other hand, he had a theme, and he stuck to it religiously. Clark turned to Robin. “Was this your first time fighting Mr. Freeze?”

Robin nodded.

“How’d it go?”

“Well, we beat him,” Robin said, looking to Batman for approval.

“Robin did great,” Batman said, taking over. “I couldn’t have done it without him.” A part of Clark warmed inside at the fondness in Batman’s voice. So the vigilante  _ did _ have a heart.

Robin’s cheeks went pink, although Clark couldn’t be sure if it was from the cold or from Batman’s praise. “I won’t keep the two of you any longer,” he said, conscious of the fact that, although his alien physiology made him immune to cold, Batman and Robin were both freezing their asses off. “Just wanted to keep you updated.”

There was a pause. A long one. But at the end of it, Batman said something very un-Batman-like, which was: “Thanks.”

Clark tried and failed to keep the surprise off his face. He didn’t have a chance to respond – not that he would have even known what to say – before Batman was shepherding Robin in the direction of the Batmobile.

“See you later, Superman!” Robin called over his shoulder, waving again.

Clark waved back.

When Clark returned to his apartment in Metropolis, he was unsurprised to find that, despite all the snow keeping most businesses closed, time had not, in fact, stopped in his absence. His phone displayed dozens of unread text messages, hundreds of unopened emails, and a series of missed calls. He sighed and began with the text messages, starting with a series of them from Lois.

At 10:23 P.M. on Sunday:  _ Some storm out there, huh? _ The following morning, shortly after an email from Perry had gone out to all the  _ Daily Planet _ ’s Metropolis employees instructing them to work from home that week, Lois had followed up with a single question mark, an effort to prompt a response from Clark. Then, that afternoon:  _ Text me back. I’m starting to worry. _ Two hours later, around the time the  _ Gotham Gazette _ had posted an article about Batman and Superman’s joint efforts to save Gotham (“BATMAN AND SUPERMAN JOIN FORCES AGAINST POLAR VORTEX AND MR. FREEZE”):  _ Never mind. Just saw the news. Stay safe out there. _

Clark smiled to himself and tapped out a response:  _ Hey. Just got back. _

Lois’ reply was immediate:  _ You’re in the news again. Good work, hero. _ She linked to another  _ Gotham Gazette _ article: “POWER RESTORED AND CHAOS AVOIDED THANKS TO DYNAMIC SUPERHERO TEAM-UP.” It was a glowing article praising Batman, Robin, and Superman’s work in taking down Mr. Freeze and keeping things stable in Gotham.  _ Thanks _ , Clark sent, moments before Lois texted back,  _ Better call Perry. He’s losing his shit. _

Clark scrolled through his missed calls, finding that no less than seven of them were labeled “PERRY WHITE.” He gritted his teeth and dialed his boss’ number. Perry picked up on the second ring.

“Where have you been?” Perry demanded, dispensing with greetings. “I had to get someone else to cover that team-up in Gotham, Superman and Batman and that new one, what’s his name?”

“Robin?” Clark prompted.

“That’s it. Where were you?”

“I was working on the Wayne Foundation piece,” Clark lied easily. It was a regrettable fact of his life that he was more than used to lying to his boss to cover his hero work. “Got stuck in Gotham when the power went out.”

Perry’s tone changed from one of accusation to one of concern. “Shit,” he said. “You alright?” Despite his hardass approach to managing the  _ Daily Planet _ team, deep down, Perry really did care about his employees.

“I’m fine,” Clark reassured him. “I’ll be back in town once the trains are running.” Another lie, but if Perry knew he was back already, he’d be suspicious.

“You take care of yourself.”

Clark hung up. He answered the rest of his text messages, skimmed through his emails and answered any that were pressing, and found that the majority of the remaining missed calls to his phone were from salespeople and scammers. He pocketed the device and was going to start getting ready for bed when a thought struck him. Before he could dismiss the idea as ill-conceived and irrational, he was scrolling through his call log and dialing a number that had only contacted him once: Bruce’s.

The call went to voicemail.  _ Of course it did _ , Clark thought. There was no way Bruce would have saved Clark’s number in his phone and no reason for him to answer a call from an unknown number. He was an incredibly busy man.

None of these thoughts stopped Clark from picking up immediately when he saw that same number ringing him an hour later, while he was on his laptop in bed.

“This is Clark Kent,” he answered.

“I thought so.” Bruce’s familiar, rumbling voice sent an unsettling jolt of pleasure through Clark’s spine. He suppressed it. “I saw you called.”

“Oh, yeah.” Not since he had nervously experimented with his bisexuality in college had Clark tried this hard to sound casual –  _ act natural, act like you calling him is a totally normal and not-creepy thing to do _ – when talking to another man. “I had your number from when you called me a while back, when I first told you about the article.”

“I remember,” Bruce said. “What do you need?”

“I was just calling about what’s been going on in Gotham.” He racked his brain for a believable explanation, something other than  _ I wanted to make sure you were doing alright _ . “I saw the Wayne Foundation was involved in the relief efforts.”

“It wasn’t much,” Bruce said humbly. “Wayne Manor has a generator for backup power, so we turned the house into a makeshift shelter for anyone in the area. I can arrange for you to interview the volunteers who were involved in the effort; I was actually out of town the entire time.”

“That would be great.” Clark breathed a sigh of relief that Bruce hadn’t called him on his lie. “Anything I can get for the article would be… great.”

“How are things in Metropolis?” Bruce asked him. Like he cared. Like  _ he _ wanted to make sure  _ Clark _ was alright. Clark’s stomach did a flip.

“I was… in Gotham, actually,” he said. “When the storm hit.” The key to lying to cover his secret identity was keeping his lies consistent. He’d told Perry he was in Gotham during the storm; he had to tell Bruce the same thing.

“Guess we missed each other, then. Hopefully I’ll get the chance to see you the next time you’re here.”

“Yeah. Hopefully.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “My lovestruck teenager days are behind me,” Clark said, you know, like a liar.


	7. Chapter 7

Feeling like the world’s biggest idiot and stuck working from home with nothing but his own thoughts to keep him company for the next few days until the snow stopped falling, the streets were clear, and the buses were running reliably again, Clark abruptly decided he needed to seek out a more objective opinion on his inconvenient feelings for Bruce Wayne. When it came to complicated personal matters, Clark either turned to his parents or to Lois. His parents were, obviously, out of the question for this particular subject matter. But he also wasn’t sure whether it would be awkward to discuss it with his ex-girlfriend, even if their breakup was firmly in the past and they both appeared to have moved on.

It was just that they hadn’t had the occasion to talk about sex and relationships since the breakup, seeing how neither of them had actually dated anyone in that time. Lois was married to her work, and Clark felt guilty getting too far into a relationship with anyone who didn’t know he was Superman – open communication was the key to a successful relationship, his parents had taught him growing up, and secrets were toxic to love – which meant he could only enter a relationship with someone he trusted to keep his secret. That was a very short list.

Clark took out his phone, deciding that, even if Lois wasn’t comfortable talking about his feelings for Bruce, at the very least they could hang out for a while and give him a dose of human interaction to tide him over until he could get back to the office.  _ Are you at home? _ he texted her, and then got busy making himself look presentable while he awaited her answer.

_ Have you seen what it looks like outside? _ came Lois’ tongue-in-cheek reply.  _ Yeah, I’m at home. _

_ Can I come over? I need to talk. _

_ Only if you don’t mind that I haven’t changed out of my pajamas or brushed my hair today. _

Clark chuckled and tapped out his response:  _ I’m sure you look great. I’ll be there in a second. _

By the time Clark got to Lois’ apartment, flying through the flurries that were still coming down, Lois had, in fact, brushed her hair, pulling it back into a quick ponytail, although her face remained makeup-free and she wore a plush bathrobe over a tank top and sweats. She beckoned him over to her couch and fetched a bottle of wine and a pair of glasses from the kitchen.

“Okay,” she said once the wine was poured and she’d kicked her feet up onto her coffee table, sitting back to listen to whatever Clark had to say. “What’s up?”

Clark swirled his glass and frowned. “Would it be too awkward for me to vent to you about this guy I’m attracted to?”

Lois appeared to consider this for several seconds. “No,” she ultimately decided. “I don’t think that would be too awkward. Although I might feel differently if it was another woman.” She shrugged. “Maybe that’s unfair of me.”

“I think it’s perfectly understandable.” He paused and took a sip of wine. Lois always bought the good stuff. “Does it make a difference if I tell you the guy is Bruce Wayne?”

Lois sat up abruptly and set her glass on the table. She leaned forward to regard Clark closely. “Yes, actually,” she said, grinning. “Because now you have to tell me  _ everything _ . When did this happen?”

Clark laughed, amused by Lois’ sudden interest, but sobered once he remembered his predicament. “I realized it after I interviewed him for the Foundation article. He took me to lunch.” He leaned his head back and stared up at Lois’ ceiling, white and unremarkable. “I don’t know what happened. I think something about the way he acted reminded me that he’s a  _ person _ , not just a subject. Someone I could get to know, and not just to write about him.” He met Lois’ gaze and huffed out a breath. “It doesn’t help that he’s…” He gestured vaguely.

“Attractive?” Lois provided. Her grin had not quite vanished, although she was clearly making an effort to look like she was taking this seriously. “I mean, yes, I agree. The man clearly takes care of himself. But he doesn’t exactly strike me as your type. Not unless you’ve gone gold digger on me.”

Clark shook his head. “He’s not what I thought he was.” He struggled for an adequate explanation and, coming up empty, said, “He’s… complicated.”

“You love complicated.” Lois picked her wine glass back up and downed what remained before refilling it. “It’s terrible timing,” she admitted. “I mean, not that you’d ever do anything about it. You’re not stupid.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“I’m serious. A lot of people make stupid decisions when they get feelings for someone they shouldn’t – cheat on their partner or have sex with their boss – because they have no self-control and all they care about is getting what they want in the moment. You’re not like that. Look up ‘self control’ in the dictionary and there’ll be a picture of you.”

Clark considered this. It was true; he would never let his feelings for Bruce get in the way of his journalism career. He’d felt the same way when he’d first realized his feelings for Lois; he’d been reluctant to ask her out because they were coworkers, and he didn’t want to jeopardize their professional relationship, even though the  _ Daily Planet _ had no rules about coworkers dating, as long as neither of them was the other’s direct supervisor.

“Still, though,” Lois continued while Clark was lost in thought, “Like I said, it’s terrible timing. I mean, even if you’d never do anything about it, it’s not ideal.”

“It’s definitely distracting,” Clark agreed.

“Right.” Lois took another sip. “On the other hand, it’s good to know one of us is finally moving on. I still haven’t met anyone worth giving the time of day. You set the bar too high, Smallville.”

Lois’ small smirk told Clark she was teasing. “Maybe I could introduce you to another superhero,” he quipped back. “Since that’s clearly what you’re into.”

“You know any single ones?”

Clark didn’t know much about his fellow superheroes’ day-to-day lives, but he could be fairly certain that there was at least one lonely superhero out there, excluding himself. “Batman is definitely single,” he told her assuredly.

Lois made a face. “Hard pass.”

“What, you don’t like the strong, silent type?” Clark had finished his glass of wine, and Lois motioned to pour him another. He shook his head; since he couldn’t get drunk, he didn’t like wasting her good alcohol.

“Is Batman even capable of expressing positive emotion?” Lois asked.

That reminded Clark. “Oh, I forgot to tell you.” He smiled at the memory. “After I helped out in Gotham during the storm, he actually  _ thanked  _ me. Crazy, right?”

“Maybe that new sidekick of his is having a good influence on him.” Lois went back to the kitchen and was rifling around in her cupboards when Clark replied.

“That was my thought, too.” He waited while Lois scrounged for a snack; she clearly hadn’t gone grocery shopping since the storm hit. “That Robin is a good kid. I think he’s a fan.”

“Of you?” Lois came back with a bag of chocolate-covered pretzels and offered it to Clark before taking a handful for herself.

“Yeah.”

“That’s adorable.” Lois paused, munched on a pretzel, and chuckled. Clark raised an eyebrow at her.

“What?” he asked.

“Sorry,” she said, “I’m just imagining what it would be like if you and Bruce Wayne really did get together. Can you imagine taking  _ Bruce Wayne _ home to meet your parents?”

Clark flinched at the thought. “Oh, God.”

They spent the rest of the evening together, teasing each other and catching up. Days passed, the storm cleared, and the  _ Daily Planet _ staff came back to work. Clark was eager to catch up on the Wayne Foundation article; he was going to have to push the publication date back if he couldn’t get through all the interviews he needed in the next few weeks.

Thankfully, he already had a series of appointments scheduled with the Foundation’s Board of Directors. He flew into Gotham one morning in the middle of January, returning to the Wayne Enterprises building, checking in with the same security guards and a different receptionist.

After the interviews, he was exiting through the lobby of the building when he heard a familiar voice echoing over the marble floors. He turned and saw Bruce deep in conversation with a man Clark recognized from his research. Lucius Fox was involved with both the company, Wayne Enterprises, and its non-profit arm, the Wayne Foundation. Clark made a mental note to schedule an interview with him as well and made for the doors.

That familiar voice interrupted him. “Clark!” Bruce called out. Clark turned again, trying his best to act like he hadn’t seen him there. “I didn’t know you’d be here today. Lucius, this is Clark Kent from the  _ Daily Planet _ . He’s writing about the Foundation.”

Lucius and Clark shook hands; the man had a kind smile and a friendly voice. “Pleasure to meet you. Lucius Fox.” He shot Bruce an expression that seemed like it was meant to look exasperated but instead came across as more amused than anything else. “If you’ll excuse me,” he said, “I’m already five minutes late to a shareholder meeting.”

“Tell them your CEO kept you to discuss important company matters,” Bruce said with a smirk.

Lucius was already making a beeline for the elevators, but he glanced over his shoulder at the two of them and smirked back. “So, lie?” He hopped onto an elevator and vanished.

“My CFO,” Bruce informed Clark.

“One of the three people you like,” Clark said, recalling the second conversation the two of them had ever had.

“Four,” Bruce corrected with a glint in his eyes.

“Four?” Clark gave him a skeptical look. “Who, in the past few months, has managed to make their way onto such an exclusive list?”

“You’re a smart guy,” Bruce said cryptically. “I’ll let you figure it out.”

The realization hit the bottom of Clark’s gut with a  _ thud _ .  _ Oh _ , he realized, and if he was the type of man to blush, he would have. Of course, there was always the possibility that he had misinterpreted Bruce, but if he hadn’t… if he had, in such a short span of time, managed to make Bruce, what, enjoy his company? Look forward to spending time with him? The idea was alarming, especially considering what he knew about Bruce and his tendency not to warm to people easily. What on earth had Clark done to endear himself to the man so quickly?

He changed the subject quickly, not wanting to dwell on the possibility that Bruce might feel  _ something _ – who knew what, exactly – for him. “I just got out of a series of interviews with some of the Foundation’s Board members. It was… enlightening.”

“Let me guess. They all think I’m a stubborn asshole who doesn’t stop until I get exactly what I want.”

“Actually, they said you’re ‘outspoken’ and ‘passionate about your work.’ But I read between the lines.”

Bruce rolled his eyes at his colleagues’ opinions of him. “Listen,” he said, checking his watch, “I’d love to talk, but I promised Dick I’d pick him up from school today and take him to this pizza place he loves, and I can’t be late. But I’m hosting another Foundation event this Friday. You should come. You can talk to some of our donors. I’ll have my assistant send you an invitation.”

Clark nodded. He still had yet to interview any of the Wayne Foundation’s supporters. “I’ll be there,” he promised.

Bruce left via an elevator that went down to the building’s garage, and Clark exited through the main doors, ready to bury himself in the pleasant distraction of work.


	8. Chapter 8

Clark arrived at the Wayne Foundation gala fashionably late, which was a fancy way of saying he had no less than three deadlines that evening and he’d come up against the wire on each one of them, had to work late, and hadn’t even left Metropolis by the time the event started. The ballroom at Wayne Manor – the same space where the Foundation launch had been held – was once again filled with mingling philanthropists carrying glasses of champagne and laughing politely at each other’s bad jokes. Clark craned his neck to see over the crowd and caught a glimpse of Bruce Wayne standing across the cavernous room.

Bruce’s eyes locked with Clark’s once he noticed the latter’s approach; he offered a friendly smile and lifted his champagne glass in greeting. “Glad you could make it,” he said. He inclined his head toward the open bar. “Anything to drink?”

“No, thank you.” Even though he couldn’t get drunk, Clark still didn’t drink on the clock, a position Cat Grant thought absurd. (“What’s the point of covering those high society shindigs if you don’t drink the wine?”) Clark gestured around the room. “Nice turnout,” he remarked. Bruce nodded his agreement.

“Would you like me to introduce you to some of our donors?” he offered.

“Please.”

After a long day at work, Clark hadn’t exactly been eager to devote his evening to yet another charity gala. What he’d really wanted to do was go home, unwind, maybe fall asleep on the couch watching that new climate change documentary everyone was talking about and Lois had been badgering him to watch so they could discuss it. Instead, he was about to spend the better part of the next two hours collecting statements from, as Bruce had once described them, “rich fucks like him.”

At first, he didn’t notice the way Bruce kept a hand at the small of his back to guide him through the room. He was busy thinking about how to get as much information from each of these people in as little time as possible. He also didn’t notice the way Bruce clapped a friendly hand on his shoulder each time he introduced Clark to someone new, or the way Bruce took him by the arm to signal that they needed to get away from one particular donor who, Bruce later confided, “Would talk your ear off for the rest of the night if I let him.”

Maybe it was because Clark was used to working in a confined space with a lot of friendly coworkers. He didn’t exactly cherish his personal space. Or maybe it just hadn’t struck him yet that Bruce Wayne hardly ever made physical contact with  _ anyone _ if he could help it, and clearly  _ did _ cherish his personal space. It hadn’t struck him how odd it was that Bruce had suddenly changed in that respect.

In fact, it wasn’t until Clark had spoken to nearly two dozen people and the event was winding down for the night that, like a jolt, he suddenly became aware of the hand guiding him through the emptying ballroom and onto a very familiar balcony.

The balcony where they’d met.

The grounds looked different, blanketed in ice and snow, but the space was otherwise the same. Clark’s breath fogged out of his mouth in the mid-January air. Bruce had, at some point, acquired their coats from the cloakroom and was handing Clark’s over. Clark put it on, more for appearances than anything. He didn’t get cold.

Bruce leaned against the stone railing, and it sent flashbacks spiraling through Clark’s brain. He somehow remembered the conversation they’d had here in vivid detail: Bruce confiding his exhaustion, the difficulties he was having adjusting to parenthood. Clark came to stand next to him, careful to keep a professional distance between them. His efforts were thwarted when Bruce leaned casually toward him, a move that could have been construed as unintentional. Their hands on the railing were inches apart.

To Clark’s relief, his super hearing picked up a set of footsteps approaching the door to the balcony. He didn’t turn around to look until the door opened. Through the windows, he could see that the ballroom was now empty except for the event staff cleaning up and the dark-haired kid who’d interrupted their brief conversation. Clark recognized him from the photograph on Bruce’s desk in his office: Dick Grayson. He was dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved t-shirt, but had no added layers to keep him warm; instead, he lingered in the doorway, half-inside and half-outside, soaking up the heat that emanated from the house. He shot a brief, unconcerned glance at Clark before directing his attention to his legal guardian.

“Is your party finished?” he asked politely, with none of the “Are we there yet?”-style whining you might expect from a kid.

“Yes,” Bruce said, guiding Clark back indoors so he could talk to Dick. There was that hand on Clark’s back again. Clark was determined not to think about it until he got back to Metropolis and could unpack it in the privacy of his apartment. “Are you going to introduce yourself to our guest?” Bruce prompted.

Dick held out a hand. “Hi,” he said, quite seriously. “I’m Dick Grayson.” He seemed more comfortable with adults than most kids his age. Clark had been that way, too, but that was because he’d grown up in a small town where he knew all the adults and they knew him. He wondered briefly if Bruce had taught Dick these high society manners in the brief time they’d had together or if Dick’s parents had been like Clark’s were, drilling into their child the importance of making a good first impression.

“Clark Kent,” Clark said as he shook Dick’s hand.

“Clark’s a reporter,” Bruce explained. “He works for a newspaper in Metropolis, the  _ Daily Planet _ . He’s writing an article about the Wayne Foundation.”

Dick regarded Clark with mild curiosity. “Do you live in Metropolis?” he asked. When Clark nodded, he followed up with a hint of anticipation, “Have you ever seen Superman?”

“He’s interviewed Superman,” Bruce interjected before Clark could offer a more humble response. Dick’s eyes widened.

“That’s so cool.”

Not sure what else to say to the kid, Clark made a vague gesture that encompassed the space they were standing in – high ceilings and marble floors, chandeliers and fine art on the walls – and asked, “How have you liked living at Wayne Manor?”

“This place is huge,” Dick said, reflecting Clark’s own opinions. “You should see how many rooms it has.” He paused before adding, “I could give you a tour if you want.”

Clark certainly hadn’t expected that, but then again, as he’d already established, this was one extremely polite kid. He turned to Bruce, checking his watch. “Is that alright with you? It isn’t past his bedtime or anything, is it?”

Bruce gave him a strange look. “Bedtime?” he repeated, almost incredulously. “He’s twelve.”

Ah. So Wayne Manor was  _ that _ type of household. Clark had grown up with plenty of classmates who bragged about how their parents let them stay up all night doing whatever they wanted. The Kents weren’t overly strict, but they always made sure Clark was in bed and asleep at a reasonable hour. “I definitely wasn’t allowed to stay up past midnight when I was twelve,” he told Bruce.

The billionaire shrugged. “It was a rare night if I  _ did _ go to sleep before midnight,” he said easily. “He’s fine.”

Far be it from Clark, single and childless as he was, to criticize another man’s parenting strategies. “Alright. If you say so.” He gestured to Dick. “Lead the way.”

Dick perked up and began marching toward the front of the house, giving Clark plenty of time to follow. “We don’t ever get visitors,” he confessed brightly. “Except for Bruce’s boring parties. Anyway,” he spun around once with his arms out, “This is the ballroom, obviously.”

The next room led to the main entrance, a pair of double doors that opened onto the front porch, the expansive driveway, the gate that had been left open that night to admit guests attending the gala. “This is the entrance hall, where you came in.” Dick pointed to their left and then their right. “The cloak room is over there, and over there is the sitting room. Alfred calls it the  _ parlor _ .” He put a dramatized British accent on the word. “No one ever sits in here, though.” The sitting room was a collection of uncomfortable but expensive-looking furniture, with even more paintings adorning the walls. Clark wondered if Bruce was an art collector, or if one of his parents had been. Maybe all rich people filled their mansions with artwork. He wouldn’t know.

Dick turned on his heel and led Clark back through the house, past a pair of curved staircases and into a long room dominated by a table and chairs. “This is the dining room, but we usually eat in the kitchen because there’s just the two of us and Alfred.” The kitchen was next, with top-of-the-line appliances and gleaming marble countertops. A smaller table and chairs took up space in one corner of the room, and there were stools along the counter. “This is the kitchen, and the pantry is that way.” Dick pointed again. “Alfred does the grocery shopping. Sometimes I go with him.”

As if summoned by Dick’s mention of him, an older, straight-backed gentleman dressed like a stereotype of a butler emerged, fondness in his expression as he regarded Dick. “Alfred!” Dick said with a grin. He turned to Clark. “Have you met Alfred?”

Clark shook his head. “I haven’t.”

“This is Clark Kent,” Dick said, and Clark was impressed the kid had remembered his name after a single mention. “He’s a reporter.”

“I’m writing an article about the Wayne Foundation,” Clark added.

Alfred inclined his head. “Pleasure to meet you.” There was a trace of amusement in his voice when he asked, “Are you receiving the grand tour?”

“I am.”

“In that case, don’t let me get in your way.”

As Dick led Clark to another room, he kept up their mostly one-sided conversation. “Alfred’s technically our butler, but he’s more like part of the family.”

The remaining rooms on the main floor consisted of a living room, with much more comfortable (but probably equally expensive) furniture than the sitting room and a comically large television; a “screening room” that vaguely resembled a small, private movie theater, with reclining chairs and an even larger television; a library filled with books, some of them dusty old classics, others newer, Stephen King and Bill Bryson and Ursula K. Le Guin; and a study, with a large, ornate desk that was slightly more cluttered than Bruce’s desk at work, more books, and another painting on the wall.

Dick stopped in front of the painting and regarded it with an indiscernible look on his face. “Those are Bruce’s parents,” he said. “I think he looks just like them.”

Clark looked up. He recognized Thomas and Martha Wayne from his research. They looked young in the painting, around his and Bruce’s age. The resemblance was uncanny. “I think so too,” he agreed solemnly.

A heavy silence settled between them. Dick shifted uncomfortably and began to make his way to the door that led out of the study. Clark followed wordlessly.

Dick broke the silence when they passed a window that looked out behind the manor. “I didn’t bring a jacket, but you can see the greenhouse through the window.” He ticked off the remaining rooms on his fingers. “There’s a wine cellar downstairs but I’m not allowed down there. There’s also a staircase over by the kitchen that takes you up to where Alfred lives.” When they passed the curved staircases from earlier, Dick added, “Up there are all the bedrooms. Most of them are empty. There’s a bathroom in all of them. I picked mine because it has the best view of the backyard.” Dick put his hands on his hips, seemingly satisfied with his tour. “And that’s everything!” he announced.

“Wow,” Clark said sincerely. “You were right. This place  _ is _ huge.” He couldn’t imagine living in a place like this with only three people. True, he had the Fortress of Solitude, but he vastly preferred his cozy Metropolis apartment, which had just enough space for one person.

“It’s a lot more space than I had when I was in the circus,” Dick said. Then he clamped his mouth shut abruptly, like he’d admitted something he hadn’t meant to. He carefully avoided Clark’s gaze. Clark understood. He, like Bruce, wasn’t comfortable talking about his parents, and the life he’d lived with them before they’d passed.

“You know,” Clark said, hoping to alleviate some of the kid’s awkwardness over his slip-up, “I was adopted too.”

Dick looked up, surprised. “Really?”

“Yep.”

Dick considered him for a long moment, like he was seeing Clark in a whole new light. Then he kept walking, taking the pair of them back to the ballroom.

Clark suddenly remembered another conversation he’d had with Bruce, when he’d grilled the billionaire over what it was like to be rich, and cracked a smile. “Is that the end of the tour? You guys don’t have any secret, hidden rooms?”

Dick didn’t even pause to glance back at him. “No,” he said easily. “I’m pretty sure those only exist in the movies.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dick Grayson is the light of my life!


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What’s this? Two chapters in one day? But rotasha, don’t you have adult responsibilities? Yes. Yes I do. I’m ignoring them.

Clark couldn’t pin down the moment his evening had gone off course. He had arrived at the Wayne Foundation event fully intending to leave as soon as he had enough material for his article; he wouldn’t stay a moment longer. He would head straight home and watch that documentary and then he’d call Lois and they’d talk about their experiences with the film and the conversation would devolve into a friendly argument over some relatively minor difference of opinion and then he’d go to sleep.

That was not what happened.

Instead, he’d somehow ended up staying for the length of the event, guided from one donor to the next by Bruce’s hand on his arm or his shoulder or his back. And then he’d let Bruce lead him onto the balcony where they’d met. And then the kid had shown up, and he couldn’t say no to a twelve-year-old whose parents had just died, and besides, he’d been curious to see the rest of the house. To see how rich people lived. (To see how Bruce lived.)

And if that wasn’t enough, when the tour came to an end and Dick bid him a very polite goodbye and left him standing in the now-empty ballroom, alone with Bruce Wayne, Clark  _ still _ hadn’t left. He’d let Bruce talk him into staying a while longer to “catch up,” as if it had been longer than a few days since they’d last seen each other, as if they were old friends who even  _ had _ anything to “catch up” on, and now he was sitting in an uncomfortable chair in the sitting room, staring at a Dutch painting of some flowers, having an extended late-night conversation with the man he was hopelessly attracted to.

“Enjoy the tour?” Bruce asked. He had a glass of whiskey in one hand. Alfred had brought it to him. He’d asked Clark if he wanted anything, to which Clark had answered, “No thanks, I’m heading out soon.”  _ Liar. _

“Very much,” Clark answered sincerely. The tour had satisfied his curiosity, not to mention Dick was surprisingly good company for a twelve-year-old. “I had an excellent tour guide.”

Bruce smiled, then looked out the window into the pitch black night, then frowned. “I think he gets lonely out here with just the three of us.” He set down his glass and leaned back in his chair, a regretful look on his face. “He grew up traveling with his parents in the circus. The performers were like his family. I don’t think he was ever alone.”

When Clark had first read that Bruce Wayne adopted a twelve-year-old orphan, he’d been surprised. When he’d read that said twelve-year-old orphan had been raised in the circus and his parents had died in what everyone thought was a freak trapeze accident that Batman himself had investigated and revealed was, in fact, a double homicide, it had sounded like something out of a movie. Clark couldn’t imagine growing up in a traveling circus any more than he could imagine growing up fabulously wealthy.

Bruce gestured around him at the huge, dark, frankly intimidating house that was Wayne Manor. It was the sort of closed space that remained dim even in the afternoon and receded farther into shadow once night fell. “Now he’s living in this huge house, going to school with a bunch of snotty rich kids who torture him for being different.” Bruce sighed and met Clark’s gaze. He once again resembled the man Clark had first met on that balcony: overworked, exhausted, out of his depth with this whole “parenting” thing. The dark circles under his eyes had returned, or maybe they’d never left, maybe Clark had just gotten used to them. “He doesn’t have any friends.”

That explained Dick’s behavior, the politeness, the tour. He spent all his time around adults. He fit in better with them than he did with other kids, at least the kids he went to school with, the private school kids. Clark had attended college with a few of those kids. Not too many; most of them ended up at prestigious Ivy League schools, the places Clark’s parents couldn’t have afforded to send him even if he’d gotten in, which he hadn’t, because he hadn’t applied, because he knew they couldn’t afford it.

Clark tried to imagine being the new kid at whatever private school Bruce sent Dick to. Not just the new kid, but the adopted kid, the one who’d grown up in the circus, the one whose parents had just been murdered, the one who now lived with and was being raised by one of the most famous men in Gotham. The opportunities for teasing were boundless. Children could be cruel.

So Dick withdrew, and he hung out with Alfred and Bruce and the few guests Bruce brought over, which, by the sound of it, weren’t many. Clark wondered if he was the first one. He wondered if that’s why he’d gotten the grand tour.

“I’m thinking about sending him to public school,” Bruce continued. “He might fit in better there. But he’s smart, and his current school challenges him. I don’t know if he’d get that in public school.”

Clark squinted at Bruce, regarding him. He knew from his research that Bruce had attended the most prestigious private school in Gotham. Did the man even know anyone who went to public school? “If it helps,” he offered, because there was a decent chance Clark was the only person Bruce knew who’d had a semi-normal upbringing, so maybe he could once again offer the billionaire some insight, “I went to public school, and I turned out alright.”

“Did you ever have trouble fitting in?”

“Oh yeah.” Clark shrugged. The memories were no longer painful. He knew plenty of other kids who’d had it worse. “I think everyone does at some point. It’s like a childhood rite of passage.”

Clark was the type of guy who hated bullies. He couldn’t stand strong people who preyed on the weak, rich who took advantage of the poor. But school bullies were a tricky problem to solve. He could hit a villain who was trying to take over the world. He couldn’t hit a kid who was picking on another kid.

“He’ll be alright,” Clark decided. “He seems like a good kid.”

“He is,” Bruce agreed emphatically. “A lot better than I was at that age.”

“And what were you like at that age?” Clark found it hard to imagine a twelve-year-old Bruce Wayne.

“Insufferable.” Bruce shook his head and took a sip of his whiskey. “A real know-it-all. Didn’t follow the rules, didn’t respect authority.”

“I’ve known teenagers like that.”

Bruce leaned toward him and held his gaze. Clark found that the urge to lean away had left him at some point between when they’d stood out on the balcony and now. “Something tells me you weren’t one of those teenagers.”

“No way. I followed all the rules. I did my homework, I listened to my teachers, I talked to my parents about my feelings.” Clark smiled. “They said later on that they kept waiting for me to start acting like I hated them, you know, like teenagers do, but I never did.”

Bruce leaned away. A part of Clark regretted that. A larger part of him told the other part to shut up. “Fingers crossed that’s how Dick turns out.”

A long pause stretched between them. Clark was once again acutely aware of the fact that he was in Bruce Wayne’s house, talking to the man himself – the man he was supposed to be writing an article about – at one in the morning, and one of them was drinking. He was even more aware of the fact that his desire to leave this place and go home had dissipated. He couldn’t decide which of these facts was more worrying.

This was all way more intimate than their professional relationship should allow. Clark didn’t even know how they’d gotten this far. He knew he should put a stop to it, reestablish a reasonable boundary and stay on the right side of that boundary until he’d finished writing the Wayne Foundation article and then never see Bruce Wayne again.

Instead he asked, “Do you have late-night conversations with every reporter who writes an article about you?”

“Only the interesting ones,” Bruce retorted, and there was that smirk again, and there was that tight feeling in Clark’s chest again.

Clark wanted to dig deeper, ask more questions. Questions like, “Why me?” “What are we doing?” “What exactly is this?” Was Bruce trying to befriend him? Is that what this was? Was it possible that billionaire Bruce Wayne was secretly just as lonely as his kid was? There had definitely been flirting, but some people were the type who flirted with everyone. Some people had teasing, flirtatious-sounding conversations with their friends. Nothing Bruce had said or done implied romantic intentions. That was just Clark reading into it, through the biased lens of his own attraction.

But there was something in his eyes…

All this thinking was making Clark’s head spin. He stood abruptly, the rational part of his brain finally taking over, steering him away from this place where he was tempted to say too much and maybe do something he would regret. “I should head home.”

Bruce got to his feet and placed a hand on Clark’s elbow. He was standing too close. The previously drafty room suddenly felt too warm. “The trains aren’t still running, are they?”

Clark didn’t actually know the answer to that. He’d never taken the train from Gotham to Metropolis; he’d always flown. But a rich guy like Bruce probably hadn’t either, so he could fudge an answer. “I’ll have to get an Uber,” he said.

“That’s a two hour drive. It’s one in the morning.” Bruce took his phone out of his pocket and was already typing when he said, “I’ll get you a hotel room for the night.”

Clark shook his head and said firmly, “I can’t let you do that.” If it came down to it, he could get his own hotel room and charge it to his company card. Most of the time the card sat unused in his wallet; he rarely needed it. But he didn’t need a hotel room, because he could just fly back to Metropolis. Not that Bruce could ever know that.

Bruce opened the Uber app on his phone. “Then at least let me pay for your ride,” he offered, willing to compromise. “It’s the least I can do. The only reason you’re all the way out here so late is because I kept you.”

It was true. And Clark couldn’t think of a reason to refuse that didn’t entail revealing he was, in fact, Superman. So he gave in, reluctantly. “Alright. Fine.” He sighed. “Only because I know you can afford it.”

Clark cringed at the thought of spending the next two hours in a stranger’s car instead of in the comfort of his own home, watching a Netflix documentary. The things he did to conceal his secret identity.

Bruce waited with him until the Uber arrived, even though it took almost twenty minutes – it was late, and Wayne Manor wasn’t exactly the most accessible location in Gotham – and even though Clark repeatedly told him he didn’t have to. He escorted Clark out the front door, and before Clark could dash outside and get away from this place, Bruce once again stepped well into Clark’s personal space and said in a low, almost sultry voice, “Thanks for coming tonight.”

“Thanks for connecting me with those donors,” Clark said breezily, putting on a convincing show of a man who wasn’t dying on the inside. He cursed his super senses for picking up and amplifying every Bruce-related sensation: the blood rushing through his veins and the steady heartbeat in his chest, the whiskey on his breath underneath the cologne that had faded to almost nothing as the day wore on.

If he were the protagonist in a movie, Clark would have leaned in, closed the infinitesimal space between them, and kissed Bruce, in front of God and the Uber driver and everyone. The scene played in his mind, how it would feel, how it would taste. Like expensive scotch. Like everything he’d been craving for what felt like forever but had really only been a few weeks, since that fucking lunch at the cafe.

He stepped across the threshold and out onto the driveway. His feet and his professionalism and his lauded self-control propelled him into the Uber and kept him from looking back as the car rolled out onto the streets of Gotham, toward Metropolis. But his super senses told him that Bruce stayed standing in the illuminated doorway to his manor for a long time after Clark left.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You’ll get another two chapters today so you’d best be ready.

Clark gave himself exactly forty-eight hours – a single weekend – to sit and think about what had happened at Wayne Manor. He could now be fairly certain that there was  _ something _ going on between himself and Bruce. He didn’t want to put a name to it yet, but try as he might, he couldn’t deny the tension he’d felt between them that night. It was the same sizzling sensation of mutual attraction that had hovered in the air between him and Lois when they’d circled around each other for months before he finally gave in and asked her out.

For now, Clark decided, he would operate under the assumption that Bruce was at least as attracted to him as he was to Bruce. It wasn’t outside of the realm of possibility. Bruce Wayne was openly bisexual. He didn’t have the greatest relationship track record, but Clark got the sense that the billionaire’s playboy reputation was more rumor than fact. Maybe that was just wishful thinking.

Not that it mattered  _ what _ Clark wished. He could wish all day that he and Bruce could test the waters of this unspoken thing between them; it didn’t change the fact that Clark was a journalist and Bruce was his source and, at least until the  _ Daily Planet  _ published the Wayne Foundation article and Clark moved on to something new, he couldn’t make a move.

Even after the publication date, Clark wasn’t sure it would be a good idea to make a move. Their lives were so different. Bruce was a famous billionaire, the CEO of a major company, a local celebrity. Clark was, at least as far as anyone knew, just a regular guy. They lived in different, albeit neighboring, cities. They both had incredibly busy schedules. Bruce had recently adopted a child. And then there was the big issue, the same issue Clark ran up against in any relationship. The secret identity issue.

He’d known Lois for almost two years before they started dating. At that point, he considered her his closest friend in Metropolis. It had been one thing to reveal his secret identity to her. Technically speaking, Clark hadn’t had to reveal it to her. She’d figured it out on her own, because she was a top-notch investigative reporter, relentlessly curious, and tied with Batman as the most stubborn person Clark had ever met. It would be completely different story if Clark wanted to enter a relationship with Bruce. He’d met the man in October, and only really started getting to know him a few weeks ago. They were a long way off from where they’d need to be if Clark were to entrust him with such a dangerous secret.

No, Clark had decided. He would finish the Wayne Foundation article, and then he would put this whole mess behind him.

With that decided, Clark threw himself into his work, determined to meet his initial publication deadline in early March. That left him with around a month and a half. He spent the latter part of January interviewing crime victims and their families who had been helped in some way by the Wayne Foundation. Over a dozen people had agreed to speak with him on the record about their experiences. Some of the interviews were emotionally taxing, but a fair few came with happy endings: The criminal was caught, the victim lived. Those were the types of stories Clark liked to hear. At least there were still some happy endings in Gotham.

At the tail end of the month, Clark found himself working late (again), hunched over at his desk, transcribing the week’s interviews. He was one of just a few people left in the office, and he was taking advantage of his super speed to listen and type just a little bit faster than was humanly possible. It was fine. No one was paying him any attention. They all had their own past-due deadlines to meet.

“Can I get your name, Ms. Vasiliev?” Clark’s recorded voice asked in his headphones.

“Julia. Julia Vasilieva.”

Clark remembered Julia. A woman in her twenties with light hair and a thin face. Her parents were from Russia – the Soviet Union, at the time they’d left – but she was born and raised in America, the only trace of her heritage in the way she pronounced her name, starting with a Y sound instead of a J sound.  _ Yulia _ .

“And what’s your father’s name?”

“Sergei.”

She’d shown him a picture of Sergei on her phone. He was reclining in a hospital bed, grinning and giving a thumbs up at the camera, as if he wanted to let the viewer know he was okay despite the bandage wrapped around his torso and the pale cast to his face. Sergei Vasiliev was an average-looking middle-aged man with a weathered face and gray, thinning hair. He didn’t bear much of a resemblance to Julia, but they had the same nose.

“What does your father do for a living?”

“He owns a store where he fixes electronics. Phones and computers and stuff.”

“Can you tell me what happened to him that brought your family into contact with the Wayne Foundation?”

Julia choked on emotion as she described what had happened to her father to land him in that hospital bed. “He was closing up one night. My parents don’t live too far from the store, so when it’s nice out, he usually walks instead of taking the bus. He’s trying to stay in shape. He was walking home that night and he witnessed someone get shot. When the guy who did it realized he had seen it happen, he shot him too, but not before my dad was able to call the police. They got there in time to save him. The police told us about the Wayne Foundation. The Foundation paid for my father’s hospital bills.”

“How’s your father doing now?” He looked in the picture like he was on the mend.

“Better,” Julia said, visibly relieved. “And the guy who shot him was caught. I heard Batman found him. And it was all because my dad was there, and he remembered what the guy looked like. He remembered his tattoo.”

The next interview was with a couple in their forties. “Pete Sanders,” the man introduced himself. “And this is my wife, Ramona.”

Ramona launched into their story before Clark could even ask. “Our daughter, Lydia, was kidnapped,” she said, a flash of remembered fear in her eyes. “She’d been dating this boy. She met him in one of their classes. They were both at Gotham University.”

Her husband continued, “After they broke up, she told us he wouldn’t stop bothering her. Emails, texts, phone calls, Facebook messages. She blocked him on everything, but he would make new accounts so he could follow her again. Then he started showing up everywhere she went. I told her to go to the police, but she was so busy studying for midterms. She thought it could wait until the semester was over.”

“We never would have been able to find her in time if it hadn’t been for Batman.”

Clark remembered seeing this story on the news. A college student, kidnapped by her abusive ex-boyfriend in Gotham. He had planned to kill her and dump her in the river, and then jump off a bridge after her. A murder-suicide.

“She was determined to go straight back to school after it all happened and take her midterms,” Pete explained, “Even though the school told her she didn’t have to. They would have arranged for her to make up the tests once she’d had some time to recover. But nothing would change her mind.”

“She was always a dedicated student,” Ramona added. “Straight A’s.”

“The Wayne Foundation reached out and offered her a scholarship. She already had a partial scholarship for her grades, but this covered the rest of it.”

“And they paid for her to see a trauma counselor.”

The other interviewees’ stories were variations on the same theme: A man whose wife had been killed in a hit-and-run, leaving behind their three young children. A teacher whose third grade class had gone on a field trip to the museum only to find themselves the unwitting audience of a showdown between Batman and the Riddler. In every story, the Batman made an appearance, usually saving the day.

Clark frowned, staring at his transcriptions, something like suspicion descending on his thoughts. Just how involved was Batman in solving crimes in Gotham? He was only one man (and, more recently, a young and inexperienced sidekick), and Gotham had one of the largest police forces in the country. How was it possible that, in each of the fourteen – he’d counted – crimes his interviewees had described to him, Batman had been the one to save the day? Not the GCPD. Not a private investigator. Batman. Statistically, it just didn’t seem possible. Unless there was something else going on here.

He didn’t have much to go on, just a hunch. But Clark knew from experience that his hunches were usually correct. There was some connection between Batman and the Wayne Foundation.

He just needed to figure out what it was.

To confirm his suspicion and give himself a larger sample size to work with, Clark sent off a quick email to his point of contact at the Wayne Foundation asking for a list of all of the victims they’d helped who were willing to let him look into their stories, promising not to write about them in his article. “For research purposes only,” he assured them. He received in return a list of over fifty crime victims’ first and last names, names he plugged into Google one by one to return news reports of their cases. Only six of the stories didn’t mention Batman. In all six, the investigation was still ongoing.

For several evenings in a row, Clark remained holed up in his cubicle, researching the Wayne Foundation. He was familiar with its leadership: Bruce Wayne, Lucius Fox, the Board of Directors. He knew where their funding came from. Unsurprisingly, a significant chunk came from Wayne Enterprises, the company. Another equally significant chunk came from Bruce Wayne himself. The rest was from various donors, some of whom Clark had met at the most recent gala.

Of course, if someone at the Wayne Foundation was passing information on to Batman about crime in Gotham, they didn’t have to be in a leadership or funding role. It could be anyone involved in the organizations’ work with crime victims. Clark had records of every employee and volunteer who’d worked for the Foundation. Over the next few days, he combed through them, looking through Google searches, Facebook pages, Instagram and Twitter accounts. He made a list of anyone who had even the most tenuous connection to Batman. One of them had a Batman stan account. Many seemed to have lived in Gotham for at least as long as Batman had been operating there. It was impossible to narrow it down.

Clark then turned his attention to researching Batman himself. Not that he hadn’t done so plenty of times before; he was a journalist, and naturally curious, and had decided early on that if he was going to trust the fellow superhero with his life, he wanted to know what exactly he was getting into. But those times, he had mostly looked into Batman’s history: when he arrived on the scene, what he’d done so far to combat crime in Gotham, who his major enemies were, whether people thought his vigilantism was helping or hurting the city.

This time, he was looking for different information. He wanted to learn about the man behind the mask. Who was he connected to? What did people know about him? There were plenty of theories as to the man’s identity. An early conspiracy had been that he was Gotham’s police commissioner himself, a man named James Gordon, who was tired of working around the corrupt Gotham bureaucracy. That had unraveled early on when the two were repeatedly seen together. Still, Gordon would be a useful person to talk to. But how to get an interview with the commissioner himself, under the pretense of writing an article about charity work?

_ Think, Clark. Where do you have a connection? _ He was scrolling aimlessly through a Google Images search when a photo caught his eye: James Gordon shaking hands with Bruce Wayne. There it was. There was the connection.

Before he could change his mind, Clark took out his phone and dialed. Bruce picked up immediately.

“Any chance you could get me an interview with James Gordon?”


	11. Chapter 11

That was how Clark ended up in the commissioner’s office, shaking the commissioner’s hand. The police station was chaos, which Clark supposed was to be expected in a place like Gotham. Officers milled about, some on their way out, others returning from the cold with their coats in hand, still others chatting over steaming cups of coffee. One brought in a handcuffed man who looked high as a kite, gazing wide-eyed around the room and jumping at every sound. Laughter and small talk and heated arguments and in-depth conversation blended together to create a cacophony of sound bouncing off the walls.

Gordon’s desk was a physical manifestation of how overworked and underappreciated the man was: Papers everywhere, news clippings and photographs pinned to the wall, no less than three filing cabinets filled to bursting. An old Dell computer that looked like it had been in the city government’s possession since the early 2000’s. A rolling office chair with a seat cushion that had been worn away in the pattern of Gordon’s ass. A pair of mismatched chairs on the other side of the desk, which, Clark noticed, had one wobbly leg that was supported by what looked like a beat-up old law school textbook.

“Sorry for the mess,” Gordon said, waving his hand helplessly at their surroundings. “You know how it is.”

He did know how it was. “My desk at work isn’t any cleaner than this,” Clark said with a shrug. “I’m just grateful you could take the time to talk to me about the Wayne Foundation.”

“Anything for Bruce Wayne,” Gordon replied, taking a seat in the rolling office chair behind his desk and gesturing for Clark to sit across from him. “He’s done a lot for Gotham. We’re all grateful to have him. And it’s always nice to be able to talk about something positive for a change.” He motioned to a Keurig that was propping up several thick manila folders filled with papers and bound shut with rubber bands. “Coffee?”

“I’d love some.”

While Gordon poured two cups of coffee, Clark motioned to a series of photos pinned to the wall that were separate from the rest, each displaying a grinning redheaded child at various ages: a red-faced, screaming newborn wrapped in a pink hospital blanket; a chubby-cheeked infant with vanilla birthday cake on her face; an energetic toddler rolling around in the grass next to a checkered picnic blanket; a solemn-faced elementary school student holding up a spelling bee award; a child with a trio of other girls at another birthday celebration, pointed party hats on their heads; a preteen in a white gi at a martial arts competition.

“Is that your daughter?” Clark asked. Assuming the martial arts photo had been taken somewhat recently, she looked to be around Dick’s age.

“My niece,” Gordon said, smiling at the collage. “Barbara.”

Growing up, Clark had often (privately, so as not to make his parents feel guilty) wished for siblings, who seemed to him like built-in playmates, even though the other kids his age who did have siblings were always complaining about them and expressing their envy over Clark’s only child status. As an adult, Clark still sometimes wished for siblings, if only so he could have nieces and nephews to pamper while he was single and unlikely to have children of his own in the near future.

When Gordon set the cups of coffee in front of them, Clark began. “I won’t take up too much of your time today, Commissioner,” he said, taking out his phone. “I just have a few questions. Mind if I start recording?”

“Go ahead.”

Clark began with the most innocuous questions: What was the GCPD’s role in the Wayne Foundation’s work with crime victims? What did he think of this work? What did he think of Bruce Wayne? How did they know each other? Could he comment on Bruce’s claim that crime in Gotham was tearing families apart?

About fifty minutes in, Clark reached forward and paused the recording. “Can I ask you something off the record?” He tried to sound casual, like it wasn’t a big deal. Just a question.

“You can ask,” Gordon said, quirking an eyebrow suspiciously. “I might not answer.”

Clark forged ahead regardless. “Several of the victims I spoke with mentioned Batman’s involvement in apprehending their aggressors. Does the GCPD have any records of how many cases Batman is involved in, as a percentage of total cases?”

Gordon visibly relaxed his shoulders. It seemed this was a question he didn’t mind answering. Clark inwardly breathed a sigh of relief. “I’m sure someone is tracking that information somewhere, but I wouldn’t know where to find it off the top of my head. I could give you an estimate.”

“That’d be great.”

“Obviously most of the crime in Gotham isn’t at a level where it would make sense to involve Batman,” Gordon explained. “He’s only one guy.” This was as Clark had assumed. It was why it had struck him as unlikely when he’d learned how many of the Wayne Foundation’s cases Batman had resolved. “So the toughest crimes take priority: murder, time-sensitive cases like kidnappings, complex cases involving organized crime.” He paused and made some mental calculations. “Definitely less than ten percent. Less than five percent, even.”

Less than five percent of the criminal cases in Gotham ended up involving Batman. But ninety percent of the Wayne Foundation’s cases involved him. Something was going on here.

“You’ve worked with Batman multiple times, haven't you?” Clark asked.

“Sure.”

“Have you ever wondered who he is? Under the mask.”

There was that suspicious look again. Clark was treading in dangerous territory. “Everybody wonders,” Gordon said, keeping his answers purposefully vague.

“Do you have any theories?”

“None I’m willing to share.”

“That’s fair.” Clark made an effort to sound unconcerned. “Thanks for indulging my curiosity.”

“Any more questions about the Wayne Foundation?”

Clark stood and collected his phone and his coat. “I think we covered everything.” He held out his hand and shook Gordon’s. “Thank you for your time.”

“No problem.”

Clark walked away from his interview with the police commissioner knowing one thing for certain: There was a connection between Batman and the Wayne Foundation. He didn’t know how much Gordon knew, if the commissioner was genuinely in the dark about Batman’s identity or if he knew more than he was letting on.

A twinge of guilt stabbed Clark unexpectedly in the chest. He hadn’t meant to start looking into Batman’s connections and, possibly, his identity. He fully believed that every superhero was entitled to a secret identity, and that it was none of his business what they got up to in their time off. With his super senses and x-ray vision, it would be a relatively minor feat for him to follow them home and figure out where they lived, where they worked, what name they went by in the real world. But he was a nice guy who respected his superpowered colleagues’ privacy, just as he hoped they respected his. He wouldn’t want anyone to go poking around in his life and figure out Clark Kent and Superman were the same person. (Well, okay, Lois had already done exactly that, but he didn’t want anyone else to do it.)

But he was a reporter, and the instant he’d cottoned on to something fishy happening over at the Wayne Foundation, it was like someone had flipped a switch. He  _ had _ to know. He didn’t plan on flying around Gotham using his superpowers to pry into Batman’s secret life; those were drastic measures he would only ever use as a last resort, if he really  _ needed _ to know something, not just to satisfy his curiosity. But if he was going to write a thorough article on the Wayne Foundation, it was his duty as an investigative reporter to, at the very least, take advantage of all the skills he had in his journalistic toolkit and make sure the story he was about to publish was as accurate as could be. Any responsible reporter would do the same.

Except that wasn’t it, was it? Clark hated to admit it, but his spur-of-the-moment investigation was more personal than that. Over the past two weeks, ever since he’d happened upon this unexpected mystery, he’d managed to thoroughly distract himself from his feelings for Bruce. He’d hardly even thought about their lunch at the cafe, their almost-kiss in the Manor. But the man had been in the back of his mind the entire time. And the real reason Clark felt he had to uncover the connection was between the Wayne Foundation and Batman was… he wanted to know if Bruce was involved.

It wasn’t a matter of wanting to know whether Bruce had been keeping secrets from him. They were barely acquaintances. Of course Bruce hadn’t told Clark everything about himself, of course he was keeping secrets. Clark didn’t expect that Bruce had been completely honest and straightforward with him any more than he had been completely honest and straightforward with Bruce. He’d already told Bruce several bold-faced lies to conceal his secret identity.

Maybe that was the reason he wanted to know. If it turned out Bruce  _ had _ been keeping secrets from him, Clark would feel, in some way, absolved. If they were  _ both _ keeping secrets, everything would be alright. And that was how Clark realized that, even though he kept telling himself he was going to ignore this thing between him and Bruce, finish the article, and move on with his life, a part of him, buried too deep for him to pluck it out, still held out hope that there could be a future there. Some completely irrational part of him was planning for the day when he could ask Bruce out, and maybe one date would lead to another, and maybe there would be a relationship, and then it would matter who was keeping secrets from whom.

_ I’m an even bigger idiot than I thought. _ Clark  _ wanted _ there to be a connection between the Wayne Foundation and Batman. And he wanted Bruce to be in on it. He wanted to be able to say to Bruce Wayne – not right away, but eventually, once they’d gotten to know each other really well, once Clark could be sure this thing between them was something real and something long-term and something he wanted – “I’ve been keeping secrets from you,” and not feel guilty about it. So he’d let himself get distracted by this conspiracy he’d cooked up that he could just be blowing out of proportion, that could easily be chalked up to a coincidence and left alone.

And even if it wasn’t a coincidence, so what if the Wayne Foundation was somehow connected to Batman? As Batman’s sort-of-friend, he should be happy to learn that the hero was involved with a charity that was aiming to bring justice and peace to victims of crime in Gotham. Other than that, it shouldn’t matter to him at all. It shouldn’t matter whether or not Commissioner Gordon knew who Batman was behind the mask. Hell, it shouldn’t even matter if Batman was Bruce Wayne himself.

…Now that was an idea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sneaky Barbara Gordon mention! I love her.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve been looking forward to this chapter. Enjoy!

Jimmy heaved the last of the equipment out of the trunk of the Uber and up the wide stone steps to the immense double doors. Clark had done the bulk of the heavy lifting, for obvious reasons. He could have brought everything from the car to the door in one go, if he hadn’t been worried about giving himself away. Oh well. Jimmy could use the workout.

“What’s he like?” Jimmy asked after Clark rang the doorbell, and Clark didn’t need clarification to know who Jimmy was referring to. “Is he intimidating?”

No way in hell was Clark going to give Jimmy his honest assessment of Bruce Wayne, mostly because Clark had yet to figure the man out himself. Instead he shrugged and said, “Not really. I don’t know, I think he acts like a normal guy.”

Jimmy rolled his eyes. “That’s the same thing you say about Superman.”

Clark didn’t have time to defend himself before the door to Wayne Manor swung open, revealing Alfred Pennyworth, dressed just as stereotypically butler-like as Clark remembered.

“Clark Kent and Jimmy Olsen from the  _ Daily Planet _ ,” Clark said, introducing them. “We’re here to photograph Mr. Wayne.”

“Of course. He told me you’d be coming.” Alfred stepped aside and gestured for them to walk past him through the entrance hall and into the sitting room. “Come in. Take a seat. I’ll tell him you’ve arrived.”

Clark purposefully avoided the chairs he and Bruce had sat in when they’d had their late-night conversation that had ended with their almost-kiss. He didn’t have time to unpack all the feelings associated with that while he was on the clock.

Meanwhile, Jimmy’s eyes roamed freely across the hardwood floors, the intricate gothic architecture, the paintings on the walls, the expensive furniture, all the sheer empty space that surrounded them. “You weren’t kidding about the house,” he said. “This place is huge. No natural light, though. We’ll have to take some pictures outside.”

Jimmy had brought lighting equipment – of course he had – but Clark had to agree. It was late afternoon, the sky was clear, and the snow from the last month’s storm had melted away in weather that was unseasonably warm for February in New Jersey. It was the perfect day for outdoor photography.

A pair of footsteps alerted Jimmy to the presence of two figures approaching from inside the house, and when he turned, so did Clark.

Bruce Wayne was dressed in a suit and tie, Dick in a sweater and khakis, both with their hair combed, ready to be photographed. Clark had decided he wanted to get some pictures of Dick, not just of Bruce, for the article, since the kid was such a key part of the story he would be telling.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” Bruce said, reaching out to shake Jimmy and Clark’s hands in turn. “Bruce Wayne.”

“Jimmy Olsen. And you’ve met my colleague, Clark Kent.” Jimmy turned to Dick. “And you must be Richard Grayson.”

Dick shook their hands with just as much poise and professionalism as his guardian. “Nice to meet you.” He grinned up at Clark. “Hi, Mr. Kent.” Clark smiled back.

“Where would you like to set everything up?” Bruce nodded toward their pile of equipment.

“Do you have an office?” Jimmy asked.

“This way.”

Bruce led them to the study, giving Clark an opportunity to assess him for a moment before he had to refocus on work. The idea that Bruce Wayne was Batman had come to him in a surprise moment of clarity and he hadn’t been able to shake it since, even though he had no concrete evidence to support it. But Bruce was around the right height, the right build. His voice was different, not as gravelly, but that could be something he put on when he put on the mask. Not to mention he was well-connected, well-funded, and he just so happened to have adopted a twelve-year-old a few months before Batman started appearing with a child-sized crime-fighting wingman at his side.

Maybe it was crazy. Maybe this was just Clark once again looking for some way things could work out between them. He couldn’t imagine himself in a long-term relationship with Bruce Wayne, a man he’d just met a few months ago and didn’t trust nearly enough to tell his deepest, most dangerous secret. He  _ could _ , however, imagine himself in a long-term relationship with Bruce Wayne, a man who was secretly Batman, who Clark had known for years and already trusted with his life.

They arrived in the study. Jimmy looked around, content. “This is perfect. Clark, help me set up.”

Once they had all the cameras and lighting equipment angled exactly how Jimmy wanted it, Jimmy motioned for Bruce to step forward. “We’ll do a few seated at your desk. Then I think I want a few more in that library we passed on the way here.” Jimmy shifted things around on Bruce’s desk, meticulous as always. “I’d like to get some outside too. Everyone looks best in natural light.”

While Jimmy photographed Bruce, Clark and Dick sat next to each other on twin armchairs. “How have you been?” Clark asked, striking up a friendly conversation.

“Good,” Dick said, and he sounded genuine.

“School’s okay?”

“It’s fine.” That hadn’t been as genuine. “I got to leave early for this.”

“What’s your favorite subject?” Clark had always liked English class. The reading part was okay; it was the writing that he looked forward to. On the other hand, he loathed gym class. It took a lot of self-control to hold back from revealing his superhuman abilities. He could never appear to be the fastest or the strongest, even though he was.

“Science.”

Clark racked his brain for something else to talk about. Clearly the topic of school was a dead end. “Were you here when the storm hit last month?”

Dick looked out the window. “No. Bruce and I were out of town.” Clark remembered Bruce telling him that over the phone. If Bruce was Batman, then that had been a lie, because Batman had spent the duration of the storm in Gotham battling Mr. Freeze. So had Robin. Was Dick looking out the window just a sign that he was an easily distracted kid, or was it a tell?

_ I’m an incredibly gifted liar. _ That’s what Bruce had told him the very first time they’d met. If it was true – if Bruce was Batman, and Dick was Robin – it meant Bruce wasn’t the only member of the Wayne household with a talent for misdirection. Clark wasn’t sure how he felt about the possibility that he’d been easily fooled by a twelve-year-old.

“Where’d you go?” Clark pressed. Lying once was easy. Doubling down on it was harder.

Dick met his gaze, unfazed. “Switzerland,” he said automatically. The kid had a poker face. Not even his heartbeat or breathing gave him away.

“Wow,” Clark said, acting like he bought it. “I definitely never went to Switzerland when I was your age. How was it?”

“Freezing.”

Now this kid was just fucking with him.

Jimmy interrupted Clark’s impromptu interrogation, leading them all into the library, where they had to set up again and take more photos, and then out onto the grounds, where they repeated the process a third time, sans lighting equipment.

Dick was posing solo for the camera when Bruce approached Clark, standing so close their elbows touched. “How’s the article coming?”

“Just a few more interviews and I’ll be ready to start writing.” Clark kept his eyes on Jimmy’s back like he was watching the proceedings while the rest of his senses were devoted entirely to Bruce. “What about you? How’s Dick been?”

“He’s adjusting.” A small smile flickered across Bruce’s features. “He was happy to see you today. I think he likes you.”

Clark finally turned and regarded Bruce. Jimmy was right; he looked best in natural light. His skin was less pale, the circles under his eyes less pronounced. “You look a little less tired than you normally do.”

“It’s concealer,” Bruce confided. “I put it on for the photos.”

“Is that you admitting you’re not any less tired than usual?”

“God, no. I’m exhausted.”

Clark let the silence stretch between them while he considered his next move. Part of him wanted to say something that would hint to Bruce that he was onto him, that might even get a reaction out of him, but having seen Dick’s impressive lying abilities, his hopes weren’t high that he would manage to crack the older and more experienced Bruce Wayne. Still, he ventured, “You shouldn’t stay up so late,” and watched Bruce closely.

The only change in Bruce’s expression was that tried and true smirk, the one that made Clark’s heart skip a beat whenever he saw it. Just like Dick, he met Clark’s gaze unflinchingly. “I get my best work done at night.”

Much to Jimmy’s dismay, the photographer had to lug all the equipment they’d brought with them back to Metropolis by himself; Clark had interviews scheduled with Wayne Foundation volunteers in Gotham all evening. It didn’t give him much time to think about what he’d learned – or, more accurately, what he  _ hadn’t _ learned – at Wayne Manor. He was no closer to figuring out whether his suspicions were founded on anything more than misplaced hope.

He stayed late at one of the group homes funded by the Wayne Foundation; the sun had set and the stars had risen well before he left. He was looking for a place to covertly take off into the air and had ducked into a dark alleyway to do just that when—

“Turn around and put your hands where I can see them.”

Clark rolled his eyes. Just what he needed. A mugging. He obeyed, pivoting slowly, hands in the air, and saw that the man holding him up was armed with a handgun. Clark mentally calculated his chances of disarming the man and getting away without revealing his secret identity. They were slim.

“Give me your wallet and your phone,” the mugger demanded.

The sound of footsteps – too quiet for the mugger to hear, but loud enough for Clark – and heavy breathing from above him gave him pause. He kept his movements purposefully slow, not just to keep the mugger from shooting him but also to stall him, give Clark some time. It played out in his favor: A pair of green boots descended from the rooftops above them, and the red-suited body attached to them did a fancy flip in the air before landing directly on top of the mugger, forcing him onto the ground and knocking him out cold.

Dick Grayson was in the circus before Bruce adopted him. His parents were acrobats: the Flying Graysons. They trained Dick practically from birth to join their act.

That was some flip Robin had just performed.

“Are you okay?” Robin asked, breathless.

“I’m fine. Thank you.” Clark meant it. He hadn’t been looking forward to choosing between giving away his wallet and phone or revealing himself as Superman. It was doubtful anyone would believe the story of a two-bit criminal from Gotham claiming he’d shot Superman in an alley, but he could never be too careful.

“You’re welcome.” Robin paused, and any flash of recognition in his eyes was concealed by his mask. “You should be more careful around here at night.” He looked up and down the street and asked, “Where are you going?”

“I need to get to the train station,” Clark lied.

Robin looked back at him and nodded, apparently having made a decision. “I’ll go with you.”

This was just like with Bruce and the Uber ride. Couldn’t anyone leave Clark to fly to and from Gotham in peace? “It’s okay, you don’t have to,” he said, trying to sound grateful. “I’ll be alright.”

“Better safe than sorry,” Robin scolded him. “Besides, it’s a slow night.”

So they walked toward the train station, a reporter in a button-up shirt and slacks and a mini-vigilante in a brightly colored suit and a domino mask. What an odd pair they must have made.

“So what were you doing out so late?” Robin asked.

“I’m a journalist,” Clark said. “I was interviewing someone for an article I’m writing.”

“What do you write about?”

Clark glanced at Robin. He knew what the kid liked, even if he wasn’t Dick Grayson. “I’ve written a lot about Superman.”

Robin turned to him and grinned. “I’ve met Superman,” he bragged, pleased with himself.

“So have I.”

“He seems nice,” Robin proclaimed. Clark was inwardly flattered it had only taken two short interactions for Robin to decide he liked Superman. That meant Clark was doing something right. “Doesn’t he?”

“He does.”

They walked the rest of the way in silence, and when they arrived at the train station – not yet closed for the night, thankfully, or Clark would have had to make up yet another lie – Clark turned and thanked Robin. “Thanks for walking with me. And for saving me.”

“No problem.” As Clark descended the escalator into the station, Robin waved at him from the sidewalk above. “Have a nice night, Mr. Kent!”

When Clark reached the bottom of the escalator, he stopped.

He hadn’t given Robin his name.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I rewrote this chapter three times before I was satisfied enough with it to post it here. Second-to-last chapters are hard. (Yes, you read that right. There's only one more left after this one!)
> 
> This one’s a bit shorter than usual but I’m pretty sure the next one will be a long one.

Once Clark knew what to look for, the evidence kept coming. Bruce Wayne clearly knew how to cover his tracks, but he couldn’t conceal everything. There were bits and pieces left behind, sources of information that, on their own, meant nothing, but taken together, began to fit together to form a complete picture.

He started dedicating a decent chunk of his free time to investigating Bruce. At work, he had finally entered the writing stage of his Wayne Foundation article and was on track to meet his original deadline. But the minute he got home, he got out his laptop and sat up late into the night, staring at the screen, following every lead, taking note of every detail, filled with a strange determination to know absolutely _everything_.

This was his thought process: He knew Bruce Wayne was Batman. Knew it like he knew the sky was blue. But all he had to back it up was circumstantial evidence, and for the reporter in him, that was not nearly enough. He needed something tangible, something that would hold up in the court of his journalistic mind. Beyond a reasonable doubt.

He also had a secondary motivation behind his desire to get all his ducks in a row before making any decisions, namely that he didn’t have a fucking clue what he was going to do about it next. The way he saw it, he had three options.

The first option was to act as though nothing had changed. Tell no one, pretend he hadn’t the faintest idea who Batman might be, and go on with his life. This was the most tempting option, because it was the only one that didn’t involve confronting Bruce with a revelation that he didn’t think the billionaire-by-day, vigilante-by-night would be pleased to hear.

Clark already knew he wasn’t going to choose option one. Doing right by others was more important to Clark than anything, and it wouldn’t be right to keep Bruce in the dark. So he really only had two options.

The second and third options both involved confronting Bruce, which was what Clark knew he had to do. In option two, Clark approached Batman as Superman and told him the truth. In option three, he approached Bruce Wayne as Clark Kent. He really wanted to pick option two. It was easier to talk to Batman than Bruce; even though, intellectually, Clark now knew they were the same person, telling Bruce would mean going to his house and looking into his eyes when he told him. He could think of few things he wouldn’t rather do. He’d rather be trapped in a room with Lana Lang and Lois Lane while they discussed his shortcomings as a lover. He’d rather have another close call with a meteor barreling toward Earth. He’d rather square off against an angry Wonder Woman.

Because Clark could only imagine how that conversation would go. “Hey, you know how we’ve been getting to know each other and sort of have this unspoken thing developing between us? Well, it’s probably over now, because I’m about to tell you that I’ve uncovered your deepest, most dangerous secret. Also, I’m Superman.” Yeah. That’d go over well.

At least if Clark told Bruce when he was suited up in the cape and cowl, he could pretend he wasn’t talking to a man he’d spent the past five months flirting with. Instead, he’d be talking to a man he’d spent the past five  _ years _ fighting beside, skirting around each other’s feelings and personal lives, pretending they were nothing more than crime-fighting colleagues, ignoring the unnamed source of tension between them that they were both too afraid to acknowledge.

Okay, maybe his relationship with Batman was a tad more complex than he’d thought.

Maybe he was being overly pessimistic. Maybe his conversation with Bruce, in which he revealed that he knew Bruce was Batman and that he was Superman, wouldn’t end badly at all. Maybe it would turn out to be a good thing: They could clear the air between them and start a relationship with no secrets between them.

_ Not likely _ , Clark thought bitterly. But hey, a man could dream.

Clark finished the Wayne Foundation article in between Batman research sessions. He submitted the final draft to Perry, who approved it for publication.

“I read your story last night,” Lois said to him when she got to work the next day, draping her coat over the back of her desk chair and leaning over the divider between their adjacent cubicles. “Nice work. A little too sunshine-and-roses for my taste, but I liked the part about Gotham’s failing social services system.” She gave him a sly grin to let him know she was only teasing. Clark rolled his eyes.

“Of course that would be your favorite part,” he replied.

“Been working on this one for a while, huh?” She’d taken out her phone and was tapping out an email while she spoke, multitasking.

“Since January.”

She met his gaze briefly. “Feels good to be done, huh?”

Clark considered this. Normally, after wrapping up a project he’d been working on for over a month, Clark would feel a sense of accomplishment. This time, when he’d seen the final piece go up on the  _ Daily Planet _ ’s website, complete with the photos Jimmy had taken at Wayne Manor, it hardly even registered with him. He was restless, and laser-focused on the Batman question.

“I’m not sure,” he said honestly.

Lois took a seat in front of her computer but kept talking, her voice carrying easily through the mostly open office. “I get it,” she said. “The research, the interviewing, the writing, that’s the fun part. When it all comes together and it finally gets published, it’s like coming down from a high. All that’s left to do is chase the next story.”

That was sort of what Clark felt like he was doing with the Batman question: chasing a story. Only this was a story he couldn’t publish in the  _ Daily Planet _ . And it was a story he knew he’d gotten far too involved in.

At home, the evening after the article went live, he went over everything he knew so far.

There were the comments Bruce had made over the course of their interactions that had seemed innocuous at the time but were now infused with hidden meaning. There were Robin’s acrobatic skills and his knowledge of Clark’s name without being told, not to mention the sheer coincidence surrounding the timing of Dick’s adoption and Robin joining Batman. There were Bruce and Dick’s physical appearances: They were both around the same height, coloring, and build as Batman and Robin. There was Bruce’s connection to Commissioner Gordon, and the connections between the crime victims aided by the Wayne Foundation and Batman. Batman had an impressive array of no doubt expensive gadgets; Bruce had an impressive amount of disposable income.

Then there were the things Clark had found in his research since the suspicion formed in his mind. He pored over any financial information he could get on Wayne Enterprises, which was a decent amount, considering it was a publicly traded company. He investigated the connection between Bruce Wayne and Commissioner Gordon, but that didn’t turn up anything incriminating; shocking that a secret vigilante and an experienced cop knew how to keep things hush-hush.

It turned out that the best lead Clark found was in the place he never would have expected it. He was looking into Bruce’s charitable donations when he saw something that didn’t fit: a professor of zoology at Gotham University had received a grant from Bruce Wayne to study urban bats in Austin, Texas. Bruce regularly donated to Gotham University, and there was even a building on campus named after his parents, but this was the only time he’d given money for a specific research project. It was so odd (and so on the nose, because seriously, urban bats?) that Clark had to look into it.

He exchanged emails with the professor to get his side of the story. Apparently the man had wanted to study urban bat behavior in Gotham, but the bulk of Gotham’s bats lived in a large cave on land owned by none other than Bruce Wayne. “In fact,” the professor said over the phone, “It’s right under his mansion. He wouldn’t respond to any of my requests to gain access to the cave for research purposes. That wasn’t the unusual part; Mr. Wayne was well within his rights to refuse to let some random scientist conduct experiments on his property. The unusual part was when, out of nowhere, I received this grant from Mr. Wayne himself to conduct my research in Austin instead.”

“What about that struck you as unusual?” Clark asked.

“Well, as far as I know, Bruce Wayne and Wayne Enterprises don’t have much of an interest in the life sciences. Certainly not in zoology.” He paused like he was debating whether or not he wanted to say something else. He must have ultimately decided that he did, because he continued, “It almost felt like a diversion. If I were more conspiracy-minded, I would say there’s something in that cave Bruce Wayne doesn’t want anyone to see.”

Clark went to the place the professor had described. A little x-ray vision was all it took to confirm his suspicions. He’d been in Wayne Manor three times and never looked, because it felt wrong to use his superpowers to pry in other people’s personal lives. Truth be told, he still felt bad about doing it now, even though he was only doing it to confirm what he already knew. And sure enough, there it was, right under the mansion: an immense cave, filled not just with bats, but with computer monitors, high-tech vehicles, spare Batman and Robin suits, and those aforementioned expensive gadgets. The Batcave.

That was all the confirmation he needed. At that point, he knew any more investigating he did would simply be putting off the inevitable. He needed to talk to Bruce. Face-to-face, not behind the comforting shield of their secret identities.

Clark sighed when he got home that night. Why did he always have to do things the right way?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Readers with freakishly good memories will remember that I initially planned for Clark to interview Bruce one last time before he published the article. I've gone back and edited that out because I could not get it to work.


	14. Chapter 14

He didn’t bother to take an Uber to the manor. He wouldn’t need to keep up appearances much longer. He rang the doorbell, heard it echo through the house, bouncing off the floors and the walls, and moments later, Alfred opened the door.

“Is Bruce home?” Clark asked, cutting straight to the chase. He wanted to get this over with. He found, after stalling for so long, he could no longer handle the not knowing: not knowing how Bruce would react, not knowing how their relationship would change once everything was out in the open. He’d always been the type of guy who didn’t like not knowing things. He and Batman had that in common.

“I’ll tell him you’re here,” Alfred said, opening the door wider to let Clark in. Alfred didn’t say anything about the way Clark – a relative stranger, as far as he knew, and a reporter, which was even worse – had shown up at their door unannounced, with zero explanation for his sudden arrival. Clark wondered how much the butler knew. Had Bruce and Dick let Alfred in on their secret? Surely they had. The man lived with them. He’d practically raised Bruce.

Alfred disappeared into the house, leaving Clark standing in the entrance hall. He stretched out with his super senses. It was a Saturday, and Dick was upstairs in his room doing his homework.  _ Good kid _ , Clark thought, not for the first time. Bruce was in his study, dressed in a button-up shirt and slacks like it wasn’t a day off. Clark wondered if the man even owned a pair of jeans. He focused on the music Dick was playing up in his room – it wasn’t a song Clark recognized, but Clark didn’t have the foggiest idea what sort of music twelve-year-olds listened to these days, so that was no surprise – to avoid accidentally overhearing Alfred and Bruce’s brief exchange.

Alfred returned and gestured for Clark to follow him back the way he’d come. “He’s in his study,” the butler said. “Right this way.”

Clark wasn’t a nervous man. His close calls with death and destruction over the years had cured him of that long ago. But he did feel a certain degree of… trepidation as he approached Bruce’s study, that prickly feeling of not knowing that he hated so much. For better or worse, it would all be over soon.

They reached the door. Clark stepped through and Alfred closed it behind him. His eyes landed on Bruce, who stood to greet him, one arm outstretched for a handshake. The sleeves of his crisp white shirt were rolled up to the elbows, and Clark spotted a large, angry, red splotch on his left forearm. From a distance, and to the untrained eye, it could have been a birthmark. Clark was pretty sure it was a burn scar. He hadn’t thought about that part yet, about the fact that Batman wasn’t invulnerable, like Clark, and didn’t have special healing abilities, like Diana. He was just a normal guy. He would have scars.

“I read your article,” Bruce was saying when Clark managed to focus his attention on the man’s words. It felt strange to hear Bruce’s voice like this, all casual and friendly, now that he knew. He’d half-expected the gravelly, rough voice of Batman. “Nice work. I especially liked the points you made about how Gotham’s city government routinely fails to provide for its neediest citizens.”

Yeah, Batman would like that. But Clark wasn’t here to talk about the Wayne Foundation article. That already felt like it had happened in another life, even though it had just gone up on the  _ Daily Planet _ website a week and a half ago.

“Thanks,” Clark said distantly. Bruce gestured for him to sit down in one of the room’s high-backed armchairs, and Bruce took a seat in the one next to him. The chairs were angled toward each other for conversation. Their knees nearly touched. Clark took a deep breath, and when he let it out, he let out the first of the words he’d come here to say: “We need to talk.”

God, how cliché of him to put it like that. Bruce watched him expectantly, brows furrowed, his slight frown reminding Clark of Batman’s default expression: the scowl. But this frown was concerned, listening.

Clark continued. “I’m not sure how to put this.” He ran his hand through his hair. It wasn’t like him to fidget. He forced himself to meet Bruce’s gaze.  _ Why does he have to have such beautiful eyes? _ “We’ve actually met before. Before we met at your foundation launch, I mean. We already knew each other. It just took me a while to figure that out.”

“Go on,” Bruce prompted.

This was it. This was the moment. No turning back now. “I know you’re Batman.”

For a long moment, Bruce said nothing, simply absorbing the information. This part, Clark had come prepared for. Batman wasn’t the type to act first and ask questions later. Every move he made was carefully calculated and considered.

Then that oh-so-familiar smirk spread across Bruce’s features. Clark’s breath caught in his chest, half in attraction and half in surprise.

“Took you long enough,” Bruce said, voice low and deep, “But I knew you’d get there eventually.”

That… Clark hadn’t expected. His mind raced. Bruce had known Clark would figure out he was Batman. Bruce had  _ wanted _ Clark to figure out he was Batman. And that could mean only one thing.

“You knew,” he nearly whispered. “You knew that I’m Superman. How long have you known?”

Bruce leaned back in his chair, folding his arms over his chest. “Do you remember the mass shooting in Metropolis? It must have been over a year ago.”

Did Clark  _ remember _ ? It had only been the top news story in that entire month. He’d only written about a dozen articles about it. But he didn’t say any of that, because Bruce was still talking.

“A disgruntled former employee shot up the offices of the insurance firm that had fired him,” Bruce elaborated, like Clark didn’t know. Like anyone in Metropolis didn’t know. The man’s name and face had been plastered on every news website, paper, and TV channel. Mass shootings weren’t very popular in a city known for its bulletproof superhero. “It was in the same building as the  _ Daily Planet _ ’s offices. It was also in the same building where I happened to be meeting with another CEO that very day. I was trying to figure out a way to stop the shooter without revealing who I was when I saw you.”

Clark’s memory flashed back to that day. He’d been there, of course, because, as Bruce had just mentioned, he worked there. His cubicle was just two stories below where the shooting had taken place. He hadn’t needed super senses to hear it; the gunshots rang through the building and had everyone on their feet. Lois’ gaze went immediately to Clark, communicating without words:  _ I’ll take over here. You go. _

As Clark sprinted out the door to the stairwell, he heard Lois shouting behind him: “Lock the door! Everyone get under your desks!” She’d been in active combat zones before, and her father was military. She knew what to do.

Clark had been wearing his suit under his clothes that day. He didn’t always, but something that morning had convinced him to do it, and now he was grateful. He wouldn’t have to spare the precious seconds it would take to fetch it. The sounds of the shooting upstairs, the screaming and chaos on every floor, the sirens in the distance… he wouldn’t have been able to hear the breathing and the heartbeat of someone who happened to burst into the stairwell at that moment and caught him changing.

“Superman saved the day that day,” Bruce continued. “As far as anyone knows, Batman was never there.”

Clark shook his head. It was almost too far-fetched to believe. “You’re telling me the World’s Greatest Detective uncovered Superman’s secret identity on accident? Because you  _ happened _ to be at the right place at the right time?” It had taken Lois months of serious investigative work – of sneaking around, asking around, following him around – before she knew for certain, and Bruce had simply… lucked out.

“Half of being a detective is being at the right place at the right time,” Bruce said, sounding unconcerned with Clark’s assessment of his investigative abilities. “It’s not that different from being a reporter.”

He was right. Clark thought about the events that had led to him figuring out Bruce’s secret identity. He would have never gotten suspicious if he hadn’t been writing about the Wayne Foundation, and he wouldn’t have written about the Wayne Foundation if he hadn’t met Bruce, and he wouldn’t have met Bruce if Cat hadn’t gotten the flu that fateful day in October. Right place, right time.

“Why didn’t you do anything with the information when you found out?” he asked.

“The information that, in his time off, Superman is just a normal guy with a day job?” Another good point. Another smirk. “It was hardly groundbreaking. I filed the information away for later, in case it ever became relevant.” Bruce paused. “And then it did.”

“When you saw me at the Foundation launch,” Clark supplied.

“Imagine my surprise. Superman himself shows up to write about my charity work. I couldn’t pass up the opportunity.”

“Opportunity?”

“To get to know you better.”

Clark’s heart stuttered in his chest. Bruce had wanted to get to know him. The realization sunk in slowly: Bruce was reacting even better than Clark could have ever imagined. They now knew each other’s secrets. The article was finished. There was nothing to come between them. Nothing to stop them.

“And of course you couldn’t just come right out and tell me the truth,” Clark teased. “That wouldn’t be your style.” An unstoppable grin dominated his features. He felt like they were on the edge of something. All he wanted to do was jump.

“Like I said, I knew you’d piece it together.” Bruce was smiling back at him. Not smirking. Smiling. Clark could count on one hand the number of times he’d seen Batman smile. He’d need both hands to count how often he’d seen Bruce smile, but they hadn’t known each other that long. At least, he’d thought they hadn’t.

“So Dick is Robin, then?” Clark asked, just to get everything out in the open.

“He is.”

“Does Alfred know about the two of you?”

“He does.”

“Does anyone else?”

“Lucius Fox.”

Clark thought back. “Everyone on the short list of people you like.”

Bruce leaned toward him. Now their knees and elbows were touching. Clark didn’t mind. “Now that we’re being honest with each other,” he said conspiratorially, “You made that list before I knew you as Clark Kent.” Then he added, “Don’t feel too special; Wonder Woman is on it too.”

Clark looked down at his hands. He never thought he’d get this far. He hadn’t allowed himself to consider what he might do if he did. Now he’d been thrust into unfamiliar territory, and it was up to him to decide what to do. He listened for the telltale sound of Bruce’s heart beating in his chest, and was surprised to discover it was racing. Nothing on Bruce’s features betrayed the way he felt, but heartbeats didn’t lie. Clark knew, in that moment, that he was safe to proceed.

He lowered his voice to match Bruce’s volume. “At what point did you make the decision to seduce me?” he asked. He felt his own heart pounding. Bruce’s eyes flashed dangerously.

“That happened naturally.”

Bruce closed the distance between them, and Clark was waiting for him when he did. Their lips met. Clark was caught up in a wave of sensation: the taste of coffee on Bruce’s breath; the same classy, understated cologne he always wore; the more distant scents of the soap and shampoo he’d showered with that morning; the heat of his skin; the quick thud of his heart and the rush of blood in his veins and the breath filling his lungs. They were sensations Clark had done his best over the past few months to block out, to ignore, and now he could finally luxuriate in them like he’d wanted to all along.

While Clark was busy committing every detail of this moment to memory, Bruce was putting his vast experience to work. Clark wasn’t sure how much of Bruce’s playboy reputation was based in fact, but he certainly kissed like a man who knew what he was doing. One of his hands rested on Clark’s thigh, just above where their knees were pressed against each other; the other cupped the back of Clark’s neck, keeping Clark where he wanted him. Bruce tilted his head at just the right angle to deepen the kiss, tongue venturing into Clark’s mouth, sending a thrill down Clark’s spine and a delicious heat settling below his stomach.

Clark hadn’t kissed anyone since his and Lois’ breakup. He hadn’t wanted to. But he could easily imagine himself kissing Bruce Wayne like this again and again for as long as the man would allow it.

He wanted to run his hands down Bruce’s chest, removing his shirt button by button and finally revealing those impressive muscles that his Batman suit only teased. He wanted to hitch himself up into Bruce’s lap so he could grind down onto him. He wanted to suggest they take things into the bedroom. But instead, he pulled away, because there was one more question he needed to ask Bruce, and there would be plenty of time for all those things later.

“Have you told Dick that I’m Superman?”

“I didn’t tell anyone,” Bruce assured him. After all, the man knew how to keep a secret. But Clark no longer felt the need to keep Dick in the dark, now that he knew Bruce knew everything.

So he asked, “Is he here?”

Minutes later, Clark knocked on Dick’s bedroom door. It opened, revealing Dick, his homework spread across the desk behind him, his music paused.

“Mr. Kent!” Dick looked, understandably, surprised. “I thought you finished your article?”

“You can call me Clark.” Dick stepped back so Clark could come in. “There’s something I wanted to tell you. Two things, actually. First thing… Thanks for saving me from that mugger.”

The look on Dick’s face was priceless. It was all Clark could do not to laugh. “What?” he asked, voice quiet, heart racing.

Clark continued, putting the kid out of his misery. “Second thing: I’m Superman.”

Dick’s eyes went wide, his mouth gaped. “No way.”

Clark stood, walked over to the window, and peered outside. It was mid-March, and the weather was turning. A light breeze rustled the trees, which were dotted with green buds. He turned back to Dick. “Would you like me to prove it to you?”

“Yes,” Dick said instantly, coming to join Clark.

“Are you afraid of heights?”

Dick shot him a look Clark  _ knew _ he’d gotten from Batman. “I was an acrobat.”

This time, Clark couldn’t help the laugh that escaped him. He crouched so Dick could hop onto his back and said, “Hold on tight.”

And then he took off, out the window and into the sky.

Dick shrieked with joy, arms so tight around Clark’s neck it might have choked him if he were human. Clark took the kid on a quick spin around Gotham, not going too fast, letting Dick appreciate the view. Flying like this never got old. When they returned to Wayne Manor, Dick’s hair was sticking up in every direction, his cheeks were pink, and he couldn’t stop grinning.

“Well?” Clark asked, hands on his hips. “Do you believe me now?”

“I believe you.” He paused, putting all the pieces together in his head. “But if you’re Superman, that means… I didn’t really save you from that mugger. You’re bulletproof.”

“You saved me from having to reveal my secret identity to him,” Clark pointed out. “And I’m very grateful for that.”

Dick bit his lip, still thinking. “So if you know I’m Robin…”

“I also know Bruce is Batman,” Clark finished for him.

“Did you tell him? Is he mad about it?”

“Do you think I’d still be here if he was mad about it?” Clark responded, and Dick shrugged a shoulder, taking Clark’s point.

“Are you gonna stay for dinner?” Dick asked, looking out at the sun creeping inexorably toward the horizon.

“I’ll have to ask Bruce,” Clark said.

“He’ll say yes.” Dick sounded quite sure of it. He lowered his voice conspiratorially, like he was sharing a secret. “He likes you. He doesn’t like a lot of people.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that was a wild ride. This story didn’t turn out at all how I originally thought it would, but I’m satisfied with where it ended up. Huge thanks to everyone who read, left kudos, and especially everyone who left a comment. You’re the real MVPs.
> 
> If you have an idea that you think I could turn into a decent story, drop a comment. I can’t promise it’ll happen, and I can’t promise I won’t take your idea and run absolutely wild with it and end up with something completely different (like what happened with this story), but I am always open to suggestions.


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